I'M NOT THERE

I didn’t think they still let people make films like this.

First, just to get this out of the way…and people who know me know this…I don’t like Bob Dylan’s music all that much. I know, he’s a modern poet and prophet and one of the great geniuses of our time. I know. Spare me. You and I are just going to have to part ways on this one. I like some of his music, but besides the train ride to go see this movie, I can’t think of the last time I sat down and said, “hey, I’m really in the mood for some of that Bob Dylan.”

So depending on your perspective, that either makes me the ideal audience for the film, or the worst one possible. Either way, I loved the hell out of this film.

I'm Not There doesn’t make a lot of sense in any traditional…sense. It’s basically six people playing some version or aspect of Bob Dylan. There’s a through line in the loosest of senses, in that the transitions from one to the next to another and back again to the first and to another don’t really follow any sort of narrative, but tonally they feel so right. Just like, you know, music.

Because the best music out there – what happens in the song almost never matters. The lyrics come to you and stay with you later. What first catches you is a certain chord progression, a melody, a harmony, a great hook – something the song made you feel that isn’t at all linked to what the song is about. And THAT’S the best thing I can say about I'm Not There. And don’t get me wrong – it’s still a great script with very, very strong dialogue (the main character is Bob Dylan for God’s sake…if you’ve ever read a Dylan interview about ANYTHING, you know that’s the best central character you could ask for), but the film isn’t specifically about anything, really. Bob Dylan is just a launching point, and even if you stripped away his cultural importance, you’d still have a great film, because writer/director Todd Haynes created something really original that just feels right.

And yeah, in one of the sections, Bob is an 11-year-old black child. And in another, Cate Blanchett plays Bob (although he’s called Jude Quinn; all of the versions of Bob have different names). I’m going to tell you straight up, those are my two favorite sections, Quinn especially. Not because they’re overly experimental or any of that; in fact, on the page, there’s no specific call for Bob to be played by a woman. But Haynes was smart to open up the casting, because Blanchett just plays the hell out of it. She has probably the most interesting aspect of Bob to play, as he was making a transition from acoustic folk to folk-rock and was just an all-around ass. Haynes goes to town creatively in this section, drawing a lot from European art films of the 60s (which I’ve been getting into in the last six months, and was all giddy when I noticed the parallel), even briefly referencing The Beatles’ film A Hard Day's Night (his portrayal of John, Paul, George, and Ringo is genius).

Other aspects are played by Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Ben Whishaw. I guess a lot of people are having trouble with Richard Gere’s part, in which he plays a version of Bob that’s basically Billy the Kid. It’s the Old West setting, the whole nine yards. I don’t know, maybe at the point they give the character his first real scene, I was ready to let the film take me anywhere and I could just roll with it, but it made sense to me. Bob identified with the Old West, and made himself to be something of an outlaw. So, this is Bob as an outlaw.

What’s great about this film is on the outset it may seem a little pretentious. You know, six actors playing “aspects” of this cultural icon and yada yada yada. But the film doesn’t hit you over the head with much. It just carries you. I’m going to break a huge rule of reviewing and end this with a quote, because it’s the best possible description of this film and I don’t want to steal it outright.

"Haynes didn't want to make a movie that was about anything. He wanted to make a movie that is something."
-Robert Sullivan, New York Times Magazine

Might be a little pretentious, but I was reading up on the film a bit after seeing it, and coming across those two sentences I was just like, "That's it!"