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I'm Not There [2007] | | |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Unapologetically audacious, I'm Not There is more post-modern puzzle than by-the-numbers biopic. A title card sets the scene: "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan." Yet the film features no figure by that name. Instead, writer/director Todd Haynes presents six characters, each incarnating different stages in the artist's career. Perfume's Ben Whishaw, a black-clad poet, serves as a slippery sort of narrator. The action begins with the wanderings of an 11-year-old black runaway named "Woody Guthrie" (Marcus Carl Franklin)--his raucous duet with Richie Havens on "Tombstone Blues" is a highlight--and ends with a silver-haired Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) watching the Old West die before his eyes. In the interim, there's the folk singer-turned-preacher (Christian Bale), the actor (Heath Ledger), and the rock star (Cate Blanchett, who has Don't Look Back Dylan down to a science). The chronology is purposefully non-linear, and editor Jay ! Rabinowitz cuts rapidly, Jean-Luc Godard-style, between cinema verite black-and-white and saturated colour, Richard Lester-like slapstick and Fellini-inspired surrealism (Ed Lachman served as cinematographer). What makes the picture fun for Dylan fans--and potentially frustrating for neophytes--is that every album and movie bears an alternate title. Ledger's Robbie, for instance, stars in "Grain of Sand," actually a reference to the Pete Seeger song. As in Haynes' glam rock reverie Velvet Goldmine, the trickery involves the entire cast. While Julianne Moore plays former lover Alice, a dead ringer for Joan Baez, Michelle Williams embodies elusive scenester Coco, i.e. Edie Sedgwick. If I'm Not There is less affecting than Control, the year's other big music film, it rewards repeat viewings like few biographical features. The soundtrack mixes originals with covers, like Jim James's heartfelt "Goin' to Acapulco." --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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 the six degrees of Dylan March 19, 2008
B.
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Todd Haynes showcases the music, myth and legend of Bob Dylan for all to see. In I'm Not There, Dylan is portrayed in stages (mirroring his rise to fame)by a bevy of talented actors. Playing the skinny, androgynous Dylan in his early years, Cate Blanchett shines. She has every twitch, every disdainful look, every sarcastic comment down pat.
There's also Marcus Carl Franklin as a young, black Dylan struggling to emulate his idol, Woody Guthrie. Then there's British actor Ben Whishaw, paying tribute to Dylan's admiration of Arthur Rimbaud. Christian Bale shines as a prophetic version of Dylan, and Heath Ledger delivers an amazing performance as an actor playing Dylan on screen as his marriage falls apart. Finally there's Richard Gere (in perhaps the weakest segment of all) as an aging gun slinger who goes into exile a la Dylan after his 1966 motorcycle crash.
This is high, high art. You'll hear much about Cate Blanchett's portrayal, and rightfully so as she nailed it. But pay close attention to Ben Whishaw as well. For me he was the one to shine.
 Six other sides of Dylan, one great Haynes film! February 27, 2008
Max Fournier (Venice, Italy)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is a hugely exciting and incredibly beautiful film. It gives a sweeping view not just of Dylan's music, but also of his times from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is also the first time that Dylan has licensed his entire back catalogue to be used in a film.
Deservedly the film received a special Jury prize and a best actress award for Cate Blanchett at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.
Dylan is played by six different actors, playing six abstractions of his personality. Each of these abstractions inhabit a cinematic world of their own, the associations stretching from Fellini's 8 , Hal Ashby's Shampoo to made-for-television documentaries of the early 1980s. Maverick cinematographer Ed Lachman recently said that Haynes created the rhythms of the Dylan's music in the film, using free-associations you're allowed in music and reinterpreting those as film.
This is a film that eschews the easy biopic route, forcing the spectators to use their own intelligence. It is the closest any film can ever hope to get to Dylan's music and his own Chronicles. If someone calls this film pretentious, it is only as pretentious as Dylan himself, in that he always played with peoples expectations and tried something unpredictably new. I'm Not There certainly deserves to be seen more than once and preferably on a very big screen. Don't believe those bad reviewers, they are liars.
the old, weird america May 26, 2008
R. S. Everatt (WHITSTABLE, KENT United Kingdom)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I'd really just like to say a word or two to those who persist in describing the Richard Gere segment of this film as its weakest point: please go back and listen to The Basement Tapes, pay attention to the sleevenotes, and if you've got the time and intellectual energy, read Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic. You will recognise all the strange characters who populate that eerie place that seems to hover between this world and some other (Marcus's Invisible Republic, or The Old, Weird America), and you will see why Gere's character is so crucial to this kaleidoscopic view of Dylan's art. I found this part of Haynes's admirably ambitious movie to be the most thrilling, and Jim James's otherworldly rendition of Goin' To Acapulco the most stunning piece of music (outside Dylan's own, naturally). Much of Dylan's best work seems always to be just beyond our grasp, which is partly why it is so compelling, but there are gateways to a deeper understanding available to us if we can be bothered to look for them. Like all gateways they can let us in or they can keep us out. Our choice.
Annoyingly Good. March 1, 2008
I. Sidhu (Middlesex, London, UK)
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Plot:
Biopic of legendary singer Bob Dylan through seven different stages in the artist's life played by six different actors. The events that follow are drawn as much from Dylan's songs as from his actual biography.
My Review:
In short, `I'm Not There' is restless, brilliant, and so far up its own arse. It's that kind of film: abundantly engulfing with its self-ego centric demeanour, with the subject that's wholeheartedly likeable.
It's all about Bobby; it's a personal elegy to him, and all albeit an allegory that tells parts of his life through the use of several actors who prove to be a well ensemble of players. It's not in order, it goes from best to worst parts of his life, and it has to be; fractionally chronological as you are meant to see his life through a mix of good and bad times.
Each segment entwines with the rest, seeming almost unnoticeable. As if you almost wait to see two different Bobby's run past each other, like some corny way to go from one story to another.
The Man Dylan, who is it we suspect is his true self? Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Charlotte Gainsbourg, etc all play a part in Dylan's mayhem lived lifestyle. Heath Ledger playing the easily absolved actor who could have been bigger as apposed to the singer who was made. Heath is also the failed husband, and then there's Ben Whishaw's Dylan who fathoms and tries to connect his life with the poet Rimbaud.
Cate Blanchett's Dylan gives a depiction of his controversial years, where he seemed lost on what his direction of music would turn to. Blanchett is the one who most closely captures the familiar inner conflict and the more upstaged conflict that wasn't in public's eye.
Verdict:
Played by multi-talented actors, we are given a multi-faceted biopic of Bob Dylan in his prime. It may irritate, fine wined for some. Amazing plethora-ed depiction. 8/10.
 Hardly worth a look February 27, 2008
least toughest in the infants (here there and everywhere)
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
And I speak as a fan. This is a film far too pleased with its own cleverness - the central conceit of multiple players of Dylan is great, but the scatalogical, unplotted/miss plotted presentation of the whole thing turns is into a disaster. It's more a series of conceptual sequences inspired by various Dylan songs.
There are some lovely moments - and yes Blanchett is very good, but even a hundred great actors couldn't salvage this from it's own doomed confusion.
Shame, because as anyone who knows even a little about Dylan can tell you - his life has been extraordinary.
Get 'No Direction Home' instead - that's the real deal.
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