Based on Dylan’s IRL girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who appeared on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album and inspired some of his greatest songs like “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Sylvie gets a deeper dive through the movie. It’s Sylvie who introduces the newly arrived New York City transplant to many of the themes he would later incorporate in his music and that would inevitably make Bob such a prolific figure — sharing her activism with him and influencing his pivot in writing from common themes about the American Dust Bowl to more social and political issues like racial injustice and war. Sylvie also provides emotional and physical support as Bob’s career skyrockets, as any romantic partner does, and in spite of the philandering that comes with it; meanwhile, Sylvie, a student when we first meet her, is seemingly overlooked and left in the shadow of his limelight. As the real Rotolo told NPR in a 2008 interview about their relationship during this period of time, “I felt more and more insecure, that I was just this string on his guitar; I was just this chick. And I was losing confidence in who I was.”
