Todd Haynes' unusual tribute to the many sides of Bob Dylan sounds pretentious and obtuse on paper, but the film itself is an ambitious and surprisingly affecting ode to one of the most influential and inscrutable figures in popular culture.
Before Prodigy ID numbers and Compuserv bulletin boards transformed into the miracle of the Internet-As-We-Know-It, my friend Molly and I sent countless envelopes stuffed with 20-page handwritten letters (often illustrated) and mix tapes (also illustrated) between Minnesota and North Carolina. For the ex-Air Force brat, (pop-)culturally-inclined minister’s daughter, those cassettes were a lifeline of musical discovery in a not-so-long-ago pre-mp3 age. Between perusals of the used CD bins at my local record store (and shameless use of multiple aliases for BMG and Columbia House record club membership deals), I lived for the guidance of a new Molly-tape, and I still have every single one of them – the Rhino-worthy early-‘90s blend of the Lemonheads, Belly, and the Posies, the snapshot of her ska period (never did get into that much), even proof that at least two people on this planet remember Baby Chaos and Menswe@r.
And then there’s a very particular tape – side A, a mish-mash of Donovan, Cat Stevens, and “Rubber Soul”/”Revolver”-era Beatles, and side B, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” in its entirety. I was heavily into T. Rex, David Bowie, Bauhaus, and anything else remotely British and androgynous at the time this particular 90-minute statement arrived in my mailbox; up ‘til then my exposure to Dylan had come from covers and my Fogerty-loving father’s curt dismissal of Dylan as a horrible singer. I was more familiar with Dylan as a cultural figure than a musician. I read through a few pages’ worth of commentary on various songs that Molly had enclosed with the cassette, including a page dedicated to her favorite lyrics. While I was intrigued, it took me a while to translate my interest from paper to ear (my obsession with the sheer creepiness of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” prevented a flip over to side B for a few weeks). But when I finally did make that jump, it was hard to believe I’d had the audacity to call myself a human being without having once heard “Masters of War.”
You can’t force yourself to like Bob Dylan, nor can you force him on others – there just comes a time when he makes sense, when a particular song or phrase swallows you whole and you don’t look back. Todd Haynes, director of the Bob Dylan un-biopic “I’m Not There,” has not only managed to string together grainy snapshots of Dylan as a nebulous icon, but he’s captured the mosaic nature of music and its influences on the whole. The moment Marcus Carl Franklin – an 11-year old black boy portraying Dylan’s roots as “Woody Guthrie” – hops aboard a boxcar and drops a guitar case emblazoned with “This machine kills fascists” at his feet, you immediately know you’ve tripped down the Rabbit Hole.
You’ve probably heard the concept by now: six actors portray different aspects of Dylan throughout his life and career, none bearing the name Bob Dylan. Instead we have the aforementioned “Woody Guthrie,” Ben Winshaw as the philosopher “Arthur Rimbaud,” Christian Bale as early folk prophet “Jack Rollins,” Heath Ledger as the emotionally distant, philandering husband and actor “Robbie Clark” (who portrays Rollins on film), Cate Blanchett as the antagonistic and electric “Jude Quinn,” and Richard Gere as outlaw “Billy the Kid.” Like "Velvet Goldmine," his ode to the glam rock era, Haynes is not afraid to skirt the theatrical and absurd, but rather than throw it on display like a department store window, the weirdness of "I'm Not There" originates from that organic stew that is the music itself, and the times Dylan emerged within. You're not going to walk out of this film knowing Dylan as a person, but you will have an appreciation for his refusal to be restrained by his own image and how the true beauty of music - rock music, in particular - is its ability to render the personality behind it irrelevant. What you need to know about Dylan is what's present in the songs, which will be his ultimate biography when he's dead and gone.
Franklin is a gem - precocious, but oddly intuitive. There's no b.s. attached to his embodiment of Dylan's naivety and subsequent coming-of-age. His scene at the real Woody Guthrie's bedside shreds your insides without feeling at all contrived. And there's not much else to be said about Blanchett's scary-good turn as Dylan at his most snarling and iconic. What could have been mimic-job is actually a thorough inhabitation, right down to the way she holds a cigarette. There's not a single second she's on screen that you're reminded she isn't Dylan, let alone a woman. Her casting seemed the most gimmick-y of the six actors, but that she is the most convincing is a testament to Haynes' creative instinct. Winshaw, who appears in brief, charcoal flashes, dangling philosophical strings, is intriguing enough to draw notice to his little screen time, and Bale's role is also minimal, though not particularly memorable - except for the impressive 'fro he sports in his final scenes. (The hair must be seen to be believed.)
Ledger's saddled with the most unforgiving role in the film - the cheating, absent, bastard husband and father, but it's less his storyline than that of his estranged wife, played by the luminous Charlotte Gainsbourg. Though Blanchett is brilliant, it's Gainsbourg's performance that resonates most; a lot of the personal heft of "I'm Not There" is carried behind her eyes. Watching her is to watch a heart breaking, and the moment she finally tells Robbie she's leaving is one of the more human and honest I've seen in a movie for some time. Gere's shanty town fever dream is difficult to grasp - it took me a full 24 hours to decide I actually liked his segment, though it doesn't quite achieve what it aims for. There's wonderful imagery at work, and a stunning performance of "Goin' to Acapulco" by Jim James and Calexico at a funeral (complete with post-apocalyptic Sgt. Pepper's outfits), but ultimately the "Billy the Kid" parallel feels forced, less enigmatic than underdeveloped. 515 times viewed
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