I'm Not There [DVD]

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is a hugely exciting and incredibly beautiful film. It gives a sweeping view not just of Dylan's music, but also of his times from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is also the first time that Dylan has licensed his entire back catalogue to be used in a film.
Deservedly the film received a special Jury prize and a best actress award for Cate Blanchett at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.
Dylan is played by six different actors, playing six abstractions of his personality. Each of these abstractions inhabit a cinematic world of their own, the associations stretching from Fellini's 8 ½, Hal Ashby's Shampoo to made-for-television documentaries of the early 1980s. Maverick cinematographer Ed Lachman recently said that Haynes created the rhythms of the Dylan's music in the film, using free-associations you're allowed in music and reinterpreting those as film.
This is a film that eschews the easy biopic route, forcing the spectators to use their own intelligence. It is the closest any film can ever hope to get to Dylan's music and his own Chronicles. If someone calls this film pretentious, it is only as pretentious as Dylan himself, in that he always played with peoples expectations and tried something unpredictably new. I'm Not There certainly deserves to be seen more than once and preferably on a very big screen. Don't believe those bad reviewers, they are liars.

This film was much better than I thought it'd be. I had a vision of against-the-light moody, dingy talking heads, each trying to be/sing Dylan.

To me, Dylan is one of those influential enigmas, who hasn't touched me. I don't particularly want him to, either; it annoys slightly how some people get so infatuated with any one artist, likening them to some type of god. Spelt with a small g. I have to admire, however, his poetry and enormous contribution to contemporary music.

It's common knowledge that the music biopic is tired and retreads a set formula, one which generally works, though. But this means that the strength of the subject either makes or breaks it, which in some ways could be a good thing as it proves the fondness/credibility/portrayal of the artist. Trying to find an alternative approach is both brave and interesting and to my mind this film works very well.

It was always going to be a contentious and potentially troublesome project. Different actors, in skin colour, age, sex even, looks disastrous on paper. Apart from my complete failure to grasp Richard Gere's role, to the point where I found it easier to switch my mind off, it was engaging, interesting and absorbing. You could even not have known who Dylan was and simply enjoyed the 'life-story'.

Much has been said of Cate Blanchet's portrayal of the speed-addicted Dylan, which she was Oscar nominated for. Regardless of the novelty of her being a woman playing a man, it is the swinging 60's London monochrome mood, stylised, chic and impeccably conceived and acted, that does it for me. The smooth BBC type heckling from the TV presenter with its nagging 'society' views was akin to one long personal headache for Dylan and opposition from authority in general. Dylan's much vaunted betrayal on his (original) fans is obviously paramount as it's still a question being raised. But, what was it about Dylan that singled him out from all of the many other performers who changed their lifestyles, music, motives? Didn't Jim Morrison start out also as a poet?

For many, that question might not have been answered to satisfaction in this film, and maybe they'd feel let down because of this; but for me, who doesn't care all-that-much, a surprisingly refreshing experience.

I'd really just like to say a word or two to those who persist in describing the Richard Gere segment of this film as its weakest point: please go back and listen to The Basement Tapes, pay attention to the sleevenotes, and if you've got the time and intellectual energy, read Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic. You will recognise all the strange characters who populate that eerie place that seems to hover between this world and some other (Marcus's Invisible Republic, or The Old, Weird America), and you will see why Gere's character is so crucial to this kaleidoscopic view of Dylan's art. I found this part of Haynes's admirably ambitious movie to be the most thrilling, and Jim James's otherworldly rendition of Goin' To Acapulco the most stunning piece of music (outside Dylan's own, naturally). Much of Dylan's best work seems always to be just beyond our grasp, which is partly why it is so compelling, but there are gateways to a deeper understanding available to us if we can be bothered to look for them. Like all gateways they can let us in or they can keep us out. Our choice.