Like a Rolling Stone

I never got the chance to review Todd Haynes glorious "I'm Not There" even though I put it as number 3 on my Top Ten of 2007. Now after finally being able to sit down and watch the film a second time, I thought I could write one.

I'm not sure if it is possible to enjoy "I'm Not There" thoroughly without knowing a little bit about Bob Dylan. After seeing it myself I highly recommended it to some friends of mine who knew very little about Dylan and they returned from the movie a little disappointed. So perhaps I will confess yes you should know some things, such as he did have a tumultuous relationship with his wife in the early seventies, he was a folk hero who betrayed some of his fans by turning to rock, he was in Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", and he did convert to Christianity. Then there are the stories that get confused with truth and fiction such as him riding the railroads, and coming to New York to meet up with his idol Woody Guthrie, to this day I'm not sure if that is all true.

I'm a Dylan fan yes, I have over twenty of his albums, I own the Martin Scorsese documentary "No Direction Home" as well as D.A. Pennebaker's influential "Don't Look Back". I imagine director Todd Haynes has all of these as well along with a few more. In my mind I would say the Scorsese's Doc was the closest to crack the Dylan code, but even after watching that along with this film, I have yet to understand or even have a full grasp of who Dylan was, but that's okay. It seems Dylan doesn't want us to know his full account, I'm perfectly content with the stories he tells with his songs, and that seems what Haynes is interested in as well.

As you probably have already heard by now, Dylan is played by six different people, but they are all not actually playing Dylan but pseudonyms. Most, like Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, and Ben Wishaw play characters of Dylan most people would recognize, a witty wordsmith who has fun with the press and someone who doesn't seem to want to be labeled. The young Marcus Carl Franklin and Richard Gere play closer to the myths, while Heath Ledger plays Robbie Clark an actor who's private life with his wife is breaking up.

Make no mistake these are all Dylan in some way, but they lead us nowhere in cracking the code, instead they make up some very av ante guarde little pieces of film making that are some of the most astonishing and entertaining bits I saw all last year.

Haynes fills his scenarios with so many colorful tidbits, with characters right from Dylan songs such as the reporter Mr. Jones (Bruce Greenwood), to circus show performers, to cowboys, to Jonah and the whale. He also fills them with real life people such as David Cross as famed poet Allen Ginsberg to Julianne Moore as Joan Baez clone Alice Fabian. There's even a funny cameo by The Beatles.

Haynes switches cinema styles with a cool hand, at times the film goes from mocumentary, to New Wave, to a Felliniesque look at life but it all seems to fit in with what is happening on screen.

The performers all keep up with what is going on behind the camera as well. For me Blanchett and Ledger come off the best. Blanchett (who should've won the best supporting actress Oscar) is ironically playing the most famous image of Dylan that of the electric rock hero who defied the folk purists and hung out with The Beatles and Allen Ginsberg and became a prominent figure in the drug obsessed sub-culture. It's an uncanny performance and the fact that Blanchett is a woman playing a man does not become a schtick but you can actually believe she is Dylan. Ledger I think gets the meatier role of all the actors. He plays Robbie Clark, an actor who played a version of Dylan (Christian Bale's) on screen which catapulted him to stardom. Robbie's relationship with his wife Claire (Charlotte Gainbourg also impressive) starts off romantic and sweet but ends in a messy heartbreaking divorce, heartbreaking because you know they still love each other, their story was one of the best love stories shown last year.

We do finally get to see Dylan himself in the last image of the film standing on a lit stage playing his mouth organ, it's the right note to leave the film on, we still don't know the man, but it's really the music and the stories he is telling us that matters, and I think that is what Haynes is trying to convey. Dylan's life is one that can be only told through his songs, through many characters and many faces, and in a way that's all that he owes us.

4 stars out of 4