Directed by Martin Scorsese, No Direction Home is a two-part documentary series focusing on Bob Dylan's rise to fame between 1961-1966. Part I is the portrait of the artist as a young man. We trace Bob Dylan's journey from a rock 'n' roll-loving kid in the Midwest to his arrival as a major musical force in the world of folk music. We visit with his high school teacher who recounts a disastrous rock 'n' roll appearance at the local talent show. A school friend plays us one of Dylan's first recorded songs. In his own words, Dylan tells us how he became smitten with folk music as the story shifts scenes from the iron range in Minnesota to Greenwich Village in New York City. We meet an amazing cast of characters—Dave Van Ronk, the King of the Greenwich Village folk clubs; Joan Baez, the Queen of the folk music world; Allen Ginsberg, America's beat poet laureate. And most importantly, we see and hear the wide range of music that influenced the young Bob Dylan.

We watch as Dylan's fame and notoriety grows. His skill as a performer matures rapidly and the songs begin to pour out. "Blowin' in the Wind"; "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; "Masters of War"; "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"; and many more. Part I ends at what seems to be the dawn of a new generation. Dylan, hands intertwined with Pete Seeger, The Freedom Singers and Odetta singing "Blowin' in the Wind" at the closing night at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.

In Part II, the story turns dark. At 23, Bob Dylan is already a newsworthy phenomenon, capable of filling Carnegie Hall without ever having a hit song on the radio. And with that success come expectations: expectations from the old left to become a political activist, expectations from the media to articulate the concerns of America's youth. It's a role in which Dylan is completely uninterested. And Dylan is already on the move, finding a new musical vocabulary to capture the complexity of a seismic cultural shift. He injects a heightened sense of poetry into his writing. He adds electricity to his music; electricity that now seems inevitable, but at the time labeled him a sell-out and a traitor. At a disastrous concert at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 his electrified instruments set the audience in turmoil.

Director Martin Scorsese delicately balances Dylan's internal world with signpost images from the external world. Dylan's music is the backdrop as the war in Vietnam escalates, the free speech movement in Berkley signals a new youth movement, and the nightly news brings home images we would never have dreamed of seeing on our television sets. Scorsese takes the time to let us really see the music unfold in revelatory concert performances.

And now the past catches up to the "present era" that is the starting point for the film. It is 1966. "Desolation Row," "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Visions of Johanna" echo against a changing worldwide landscape and resonate in Dylan's personal world of constant touring and press conferences. By the end of the film Scorsese has taken us on an emotional, musical and intellectual journey. And it is plainly obvious, for Dylan and indeed for all of us, that there are some journeys from which there is No Direction Home.