I'm Not There

If you’re expecting a standard biopic about Dylan along the lines of Martin Scorcese then you’re in for a shock. There’s nothing standard about the way Todd Haynes serves up six variations on the Dylan myth without once mentioning his name. But then there’s never been anything standard about Dylan either. He’s been metamorphosing all his life and still nobody has really pinned him down. The many faces of Dylan are what this movie is about and there’s no tidy summary.

‘A song is something that walks by itself’ we’re told right at the beginning. But the songs don’t just walk...they dance and weave their magic right through the film. Sometimes they smack you alongside the head. Anyone who has grown up with Dylan realizes how much a part of our culture they’ve become. Newcomers get a surreal history lesson. OK he has an awful voice but the poetry and the moods he evokes have never been equaled. There’s something really magical about Dylan whether you like him or not. It’s all there in the music.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic to the movie. Not that it matters. First up is an 11-year old black kid, Marcus Franklin, doing the Woody Guthrie bit 20 years too late. Then there’s a Rimbaud character played by Ben Whishaw. Christian Bale plays an incoherent young folk sensation, ‘Jack Rollins’ playing protest songs then Heath Ledger plays a Brando-type actor playing ‘Jack Rollins’ in a biopic. Multi-levelled you could say. Something is happening here but you don't know what it is.

I didn’t care much for the Richard Gere part. He annoys me. I got the point though. It’s all to do with that movie Dylan made with Sam Pekinpah. Gere is supposed to be an aging Billy the Kid but I kept seeing him grabbing that Bollywood movie star. Mind you she probably knew it was coming.

Best by a country mile is Cate Blanchett. She’s the only one that looks like Dylan and she gives a hypnotic performance. She also gets to play Dylan during his controversial acoustic/electric/machine gun phase so her segment is the only part that vaguely follows the Pennebaker script.

Critics who complain about the lack of dramatic structure are missing the point. This isn’t a story in the traditional sense. Haynes likes to experiment and you have to know your cinema to appreciate some of the references. He pays homage to film-makers like Godard and Lester (the Beatles pop up) and comes up with something new in the process. It’s an ambitious attempt to pin down the elusive song and dance man. Not always flattering either so Dylan should get credit for letting him try. And he’s still not there.

© Chuckwoww. All rights reserved by the author.