Review: I'm Not There Shows Another Side of Bob Dylan

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of Bob Dylan. This is not to say that I don’t like Dylan’s music. It just means that I haven’t spent enough time with it to proclaim myself a fan. I think that word, by definition, requires you to be able to at least name five of a musical artist’s songs and I can only name four of his. Actually, three. I can mumble the lyrics to a fourth. This makes me an odd choice, I know, to review a movie about the music and life of Bob Dylan, but, at the same time, given the abstract interpretation in this week’s I’m Not There by director Todd Haynes, I think my ignorant objectivity is probably a plus in this case.

At least I hope it is. Either that, or I’m a total tool.

Anyways, I’m Not There is an entirely unconventional music biopic in the same way that Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine was a loose adaptation of the early career of David Bowie. It’s about as far removed from something like, say, Walk the Line, Ray, or Great Balls of Fire! as one can get, and this is not just because Haynes takes a non-linear, hyper-stylized tact that strives to bend and even rewrite a few cinematic laws. It primarily has to do with I’m Not There not being about the specific facts of Dylan’s life, and instead about how Dylan’s always-shifting public persona was interpreted by his fans and critics.

Even though I’m a non-fan of Dylan, this is not to say I’m wholly oblivious to his career or its impact on pop culture. In fact, I know enough to be able to make comments like, “It’s just about as shocking as when Dylan went electric,” but, well, it doesn’t go much deeper than that. However, that split I just mentioned is indicative of Dylan’s career: the artist constantly reinvented himself, often ostracizing his old fans even as he made new ones. He did this so often that Haynes decided Dylan was actually a series of different identities and, as such, should be played by six different actors: Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin (a 13-year-old black kid), and Cate Blanchett (an Australian woman). They’re all, as the movie poster declares, Bob Dylan: the prophet (and later, born-again Christian), the poet, the outlaw, the fake, the star of electricity, and the rock-and-roll martyr. Their stories overlap and juxtapose, shining light on each other as Dylan himself slips and slides between interpretations and strives not to be unmasked as a deceit.

More so than facts, Haynes’ movie wants to get at who Dylan really was as an artist rather than who we think he is – a mission that will surely piss off a lot of devotees of the Church of Dylan. But I think Haynes is on to something here, since it’s impossible to express artistic motivation without simplifying it to crude terms like, “His daddy didn’t love him enough, so he made music to prove himself worthy,” or some such hooey. Expressing ideas about an artist’s identity through contradictory riddles seems a lot more honest, and probably achieves much greater results, though the box office sales will likely suffer for it. Still, I can’t imagine two hours of cinema this year that so consistently surprised and dazzled me in its ambition and execution as I’m Not There.

Grade: A-

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