I'm Not There (2007)

Killer Films, 2007. Directed by Todd Haynes. Starring Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

It's true that Bob Dylan has gotten to be somewhat like a twentieth-century Don Quixote. Like Cervantes' famous knight-errant, he has taken on many different personalities and reinvented himself endlessly. In I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes tries to explore the many faces of the cultural icon from Minnesota, from his early years as a protest folksinger in the early '60s to his embracing of religion in the late '70s. Yet we think that, despite some fine performances by Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, and Richard Gere, Haynes fails because the movie comes across as a little too fragmentary, and sometimes very frustratingly so.

There are some interesting qualities to the screenplay, though: for instance, Haynes has six different actors embody six different sides of Dylan's life, and each one of these characters bears a different name, although they are all clearly Dylan. They all share enough common traits to ensure that the idea works, but at times, Haynes puts too much emphasis on aspects that don't seem to add much to the overall portrait of Dylan as a person and as an artist. We were constantly frustrated by the fact that once a story seemed to be starting to unfold, it was suddenly brought to an abrupt end, sometimes not to be picked up again at all.

One of the best elements of the film is clearly the soundtrack. The use of Dylan's songs in the film is satisfactory, even in the cases when it isn't his own version of the tune, and they are very well intertwined with the events in his life. However, we believe that not very much emphasis has been put on showing how the events in Dylan's life shaped his work; there are touches of that here and there, but Haynes seems to be more interested in American history than in Dylan's personal life as it influenced his songwriting. There's no doubt that those who are in the know about Dylan's biography will benefit from it as they watch this very different biopic, yet we sometimes felt that even being familiarized with the Dylan saga isn't a source of very much help.

All in all, I'm Not There paints a portrait of Bob Dylan's life as a sort of chaotic fragmentation, yet we're sure that there's way more to Dylan than just that. And perhaps, as in the case of Don Quixote, a single movie is incapable of containing all his greatness.

Anton&Erin.