New Review! I'M NOT THERE (2007, dir. Todd Haynes)

Here's my beef with director Todd "I don't compromise for anyone!" Haynes' new flight of fancy, a college art project of a Bob Dylan biopic, ingeniously entitled I'm Not There as if to stave off any kind of silly demand viewers may have for a purpose or narrative or point. My beef is... is Bob Dylan that interesting? He's a genius. He's a poet. He's voice of ye olde babyboomers. But is the actual Bob Dylan so interesting and complex that he deserves an entire fictional film dedicated to the "idea" of him?

I'm gonna go with a no. I'm going to base this decision on my own theories of human nature as well as my Exhibit A which would be I'm Not There. The film, which claims to be inspired by the "music and many lives of Bob Dylan", spends an awful lot of time (2 hrs and 15 mins) throwing up more untrue personas of the singer-songwriter to mingle with the real amibiguity that already clouds around Dylan in the far superior and infinitely more entertaining "documentaries" like No Direction Home and Don't Look Back. So the film's aesthetic hypothesis "Does it take six actors to play the voice of the cant-exit-gracefully generation?" meanders and bounces off of padded walls until it mercifully fades to black. It also seems a little childish and redundant considering that Scorsese could just plop a camera in front of the guy as if to say "He's right there."

I don't know if Todd Haynes was as interested in exploring Bob Dylan as he was in gripping onto a cinematic opportunity that would encourage little to no self-control or explanation. I mean, it's Dylan. You could do whatever you wanted for your run time and people would still finance and encourage it because it's Dylan. Masked and Anonymous snagged a distributor. Did you see it? Neither did I. Why? Because it didn't boast a Cate Blanchett in drag. As far as fulfilling the geek quota for the fans, Haynes does a good job. I'm not gonna pretend to have any extensive knowledge about Dylan's life but I've read Chronicles, seen the above-mentioned films, listened to a lot of his music. So I did catch a lot of references to stuff. I also felt that cinematically there was a lot going on that should be commended even if the overall result is a mess.

The entire Blanchett section is very sexy. It's not terribly original but it is sexy. It recreates Pennebaker's iconic cinema vertite style then melds it with Fellini. There's even a dash of Richard Lester when the Beatles make a brief appearance. Watching this section, I was kind of wishing I could watch 2.25 hrs of that. Blanchett. I'm really torn on her. Sometimes I love her. Sometimes I don't. She couldn't play Hedda Gabler to save her life but I know that this role and her Oscar-winning impersonation of Katharine Hepburn have already made her one for the history books. Heath Ledger's section was really poignant. I was surprised since I cannot stand Charlotte Gainsbourg's mouth. But it was. Again, I could have been satisfied by an entire movie dedicated to that love story. Bale's folk revolutionist-turned-evangelist was... fine, I guess. But he's nowhere near as shocking as listening to the "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Saved!" back-to-back. Ledger, Blanchett and Bale, the three of whom play the most obvious "biopic" type of Dylans fare much better than their comrades.

The others. Not so much. Richard Gere and Marcus Franklin were just confusing to me. And I tried to go with it. I did. I thought, okay... this could be poetic. But as Franklin's section seemed to crumble as a fable for Dylan's early gusto and strange beginnings, the Gere section was plain old baffling. An aging outlaw in a town called Riddle? A town populated by circus clowns and extras from Twyla Thrap's ill-fated Dylan ballet? What?! When in all of the Dylan canon have circus freaks come to mind except to those people with no understanding of the word metaphor. I was expecting Tom Waits to show up during all this and ask "What is Dylan doing in my movie?" To pull a stunt like the Gere section, Haynes just betrays that his flair and technique are endangered by unimaginative straw-grasping. Ben Whishaw was pretty hot and a nice juxtaposition to the train-hoppin-hobo antics of Gere and Franklin. But that could've been explored more.

I don't want any of my dear cinephiles to think that I'm not completely enamored with Dylan. Of course I am. I'm a writer. I'm also an attention whore and he's the granddaddy of them all. I'm Not There is pretty enjoyable in a wait-for-DVD kind of way. But every beautiful picture or wit-drenched scene or fabulous acting choice in one thread of the tale is matched by a cringe-inducing reference or a joke that fell flat in another. Sometimes I couldn't tell if a moment was supposed to be earnest or blatantly sarcastic. I'm never as frustrated by a director as I am when he forfeits his role as guide and opts to act as wrangler. Icon or not, Dylan rarely sacrificed form for content. That's what makes him Dylan.

Bottom Line: An uneven experiment but a gutsy "art film". Your enjoyment level will depend on your willingness to surrender to it. If you liked, Across the Universe, it looks like this might be your year.