Christian Bale in I'm Not There (TWC)
Todd Haynes' latest film, I'm Not There (opening Nov. 21 at Landmark's Ken Cinema) begins by saying that it is inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan. It's a musical biopic but not in the staid, dull tradition of Ray and Walk the Line . The best way I can describe it is like a kind of Wheres Waldo book, but instead of all the Waldos looking alike and hiding out in different scenes, the Waldos keep morphing and eluding discovery. So what I'm Not There serves up is six different actors -- each one with a distinctly different look as well as a different name -- and each time you think you've nailed Bob Dylan down, he just slips away.
The six actors represent six different aspects or stages in the singer's life. Marcus Carl Franklin is a young African American boy riding the rails and calling himself Woody Guthrie. Christian Bale is a passionate protest singer named Jack who's all mumbles on a talk show but eloquent in song. Dovetailing off of Bale's incarnation is Heath Ledger who's an actor playing a Dylanesque character on screen and showing us Dylan as a family man and husband. Richard Gere is Dylan as Billy the Kid who survived Pat Garrett and lived to old age in relative seclusion. Ben Whishaw sits at a table answering unseen interrogators with lines from Rimbaud. And in what's probably the most talked about casting, actress Cate Blanchett plays the Dylan alter ego Jude. Blanchett takes over the Dylan persona at the moment when Dylan/Jude chooses to play electric guitar at a jazz festival and his folk music fans turned on him and saw him as some traitor or alien. So it's the perfect moment to make a gender switch to accentuate the change in his public persona.
Denny Kravitz
December 05, 2007 at 12:52 AM
Totally agreed with the reviewer. It's an enjoyable ride, and it mirrors Dylan's continual reinvention of himself over time. The soundtrack is also required listening; from the previously unreleased title gem, "I'm Not There" to Dylan renditions by artists like Cat Power, Sonic Youth, and Yo La Tengo, it structures the movie and stands well on its own.
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