I'm Not There

Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger Directed by: Todd Hayes Runtime: 135 min. Rated: R Release date: November 21, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
5.9 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 7 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Funny . . . . . . . . 5.2

The Nerve Review

By now, everyone knows the premise of Todd Haynes' avant-Dylan biopic: six different actors (among them Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere) playing the legendary musician through various stages of his career, highlighting his slippery identity and fondness for new guises. Speculation ran rampant; how would this concept play on screen? Now that the film has arrived the answer seems obvious: unevenly. Which is to say that, the same way certain iterations of Dylan's career were better than others, the individual passages of Haynes's film are a mixed bag. Luckily for him, when I'm Not There is good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's merely annoying.

It all starts promisingly enough, with Marcus Carl Franklin as "Woody," an eleven-year-old black kid riding the rails, toting a guitar, representing Dylan's Woody Guthrie phase. Indeed, Haynes's two most audacious casting stunts — Franklin, and later on, Blanchett as the skittish "Jude," representing Dylan at his most controversial and daring, around the time he went electric — are by far his most successful. His least successful, on the other hand, is no doubt a startlingly clunky later passage featuring Richard Gere in a pseudo-Western scenario, embodying Dylan's persona during the period he wrote songs for and appeared in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Blanchett's uncanny turn rightfully dominates the film (in both length and power), and you wonder if a simple Dylan biopic starring Cate Blanchett might not have been more successful. Perhaps — but then we might have lost something more essential and valuable. Haynes has carved out a unique place in contemporary cinema by mixing academic conceits with a disarming sense of style. I'll bet there were hundreds of master's theses proposed about I'm Not There even before it had a release date. Audiences tend to disdain such high-falutin' setups, and certainly many scenes in Haynes's film will irritate those who prefer their movies simple and de-intellectualized. But the screen would be a poorer, smaller place without such ambition: I'm Not There is one film that shines even brighter with its flaws. — Bilge Ebiri

Other Reviews

The Hollywood Reporter
Ray Bennett
"The film is said to have the endorsement of Dylan, which must have taken some courage given the ragged edges of his life on display. But the film fits well with his singular ability to reinvent himself while really putting us nowhere nearer to fully understanding the man. "
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The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
"Six actors take six different roles and run with them, each role being a loopy, meandering riff on the sort of life that Dylan has had, or could have had, or conjured in his songs. It makes "Yellow Submarine" look like a miracle of sober narrative."
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Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
"Instead of genuflecting at the altar of Dylan, Haynes fills his movie with joy and pleasure. He takes delight in the way Dylan has always loved to tweak us, to make wicked little jokes, to turn familiar phrases inside out and show us how poetry is really just the underside of common speech."
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Variety
Todd McCarthy
"A densely idiosyncratic, cubist-like cinematic portrait of a man who often calls to mind Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" resembles a film a precocious grad student in musicology might make about a creative hero."
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Your Reviews

A magnificent movie! I'm Not There is not a biopic at all. What it is - precisely - is a visual representation of a Bob Dylan song - ponderous and unwieldly and troubled and disquieting, shot through with amazing beauty and humor. It is absolutely mesmerizing. Jude to Christ on a cross: "Do your early stuff!" Needless to say, it will be most appreciated by those who have listened while Bob broke their hearts in darkened rooms for thousands of hours. Those with only a cursory knowledge of his songs may find the film baffling and irritating. But if "How does it feel...?" is a prayer on your lips, you will absolutely love this movie. It has my highest recommendation - 10,000 stars out of ten.

posted by shycat on 11/29/2007 2:09:58 PM
nerve personals profile: oldsoultoo

Todd Haynes has skirted the art/entertainment line before with VELVET GOLDMINE, but even that film's more eccentric touches can't match the flights of fancy in I'M NOT THERE, which is the closest thing to a work of art as you'll ever see in the local multiplex. This fact alone makes the film worth seeing -- just to watch hordes of suburbanites toddle into the cinema to see Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett and stumble out, dazed, wondering what in tarnation they've just witnessed. The fact is, I'M NOT THERE is only about 1/2 of an entertaining film. The rest is a puzzle, and unless you're the type who enjoys plumbing the psychology of a character who defies categorization, even for the filmmaker, you're going to sit there scratching your head with the rest of us.

posted by filmington on 11/26/2007 8:43:49 AM
nerve personals profile: MickeySachs