Describing I’m Not There is a tall task. This movie is weird. It’s beyond weird. It’s bizarre and artistic and insane and bonkers and very, very, good. It is, in some way, the story of Bob Dylan. But it’s Bob Dylan as imagined by Todd Haynes, the director of some of the strangest, yet most powerful and subversive movies in cinema today. And this is another in his long string of great and successful yet incredibly strange and complex films Mr. Haynes has unleashed upon North America. Haynes has managed, with I’m Not There, to craft a movie the way Dylan himself writes a song. Enigmatic, purposefully cryptic, brilliant and defying explanation. I can’t begin to describe the bizarre scenes and the strange moments in this film. Just be warned, this is very much an art film, and you, the viewer, are not meant to understand it all. What I’m going to do here in this review is provide, as best I can, as a Dylan fanatic myself, a sort of guide to the film so that you might enjoy it simply by virtue of understanding it a little more. I hope it helps, because this movie really is terrific.
“Bob Dylan” is played by six extremely different actors, each of whom have a different name for the Dylan character. Christian Bale (American Psycho) plays Dylan as Jack Rollins, a singer-songwriter from the 30s whose most famous work was the song “Frosty The Snowman”. He also wrote Peter Cottontail and Smokey The Bear. A strange choice for one of Dylan’s personas, “Jack Rollins” is Dylan at the moment when his status as the leader of the folk movement begins to chafe on him and get under his skin. Richard Gere (Pretty Woman) plays Dylan as Billy The Kid in a movie. In the film Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, Dylan famously wrote the soundtrack, which featured the song “All Along The Watchtower”. This is Dylan’s period after his motorcycle accident where he disappeared completely for a few years. Ben Whishaw plays Dylan as Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet of what was called the “decadent movement” in the late 1800s. He was a brilliant young man, considered on a par with Shakespeare, when he gave up writing poetry altogether at the age of 21. He never wrote again until he died at age 37. Whishaw is barely used in the movie, playing Dylan at his most standoffish and cryptic.
More involved in the movie is Marcus Carl Franklin, a young African-American boy who plays Dylan as “Woody Guthrie”. Guthrie, for those who don’t know, was Dylan’s hero and greatest inspiration, and Franklin is terrific as the young Dylan who passed himself off as the second coming of Guthrie. This is Dylan the “fake”, and (I think) the fact that he is so young is a reference to Dylan’s young years, and the “fakery” of passing himself off as the next Guthrie. And I think the fact that he is black is a reference to the backlash against Dylan for involving himself with race relations and the civil rights movement when he was a white guy, the “fakery” of writing songs from a black perspective when he was not himself black. Heath Ledger, also with a big part in the movie, plays Dylan the Rock Star, as “Robbie Clark”, and I have no idea who Robbie Clark actually was. It may in fact not be a real name. Which is odd, since everyone else playing “Dylan” had the name of a real person, except for Ledger and Cate Blanchett.
And then…Cate Blanchett. This is a woman who has won an Oscar for playing Katherine Hepburn. A woman who has been nominated for at least one (and sometimes two) Oscars each year since playing Queen Elizabeth in 1998. And this, Bob Dylan, may well be remembered as the performance of her life. This is Blanchett at her very best, and possibly at the very best any actress can ever achieve. Becoming completely believable as a very famous man. Watching her doing the famous press conference after Dylan went electric in 1965, you actually forget that you are not watching Bob Dylan at that press conference. This is a magnificent performance, and must be seen to be believed. She plays Dylan as “Judy Quinn”, another name that seems to be pulled out of thin air. Perhaps this refers simply to the Dylan song Quinn The Eskimo, his most nonsensical, whimsical and completely devoid of message song ever. Because she plays him at his most whimsical and nonsensical. The scene where she appears, she is taking the stage at Newport, and plugging in the electric guitar in what would prove to be one of the most significant events in the history of music. From then on, she is the Dylan of the Don’t Look Back era, the one who had some sort of thing with Edie Sedgwick and who turned the Beatles on to the joys of marijuana.
Other characters pop up in the movie, some playing actual people, others playing actual people with different names. Here’s a short guide. David Cross appears as Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a real person, a poet in the 60s and one of the major figures of the “beat generation”. Charlotte Gainsbourg is terrific as “Claire”, who is basically Dylan’s long-time wife Sara. Although for some reason she has a French accent. Don’t worry about that. Julianne Moore plays “Alice Fabian”, who is Joan Baez under a different name. Michelle Williams has never looked better than she does here as “Coco Rivington”, which is the name Haynes has given to Edie Sedgwick. Ritchie Havens shows up for a moment, but he doesn’t play anyone famous. I just thought it was cool he was in there. Also cool - Kris Kristofferson as the narrator. There is an enormous amount of cool in this film. But boy, is it tough to follow.
And then, there is Bruce Greenwood. Greenwood is likely best known as the bad guy in Double Jeopardy, or as Mitch Yost on that John From Cincinnatti TV show. In I’m Not There, he plays two characters. One is a fairly self-important yet intelligent BBC journalist who attempts to interview Dylan, when he is being played by Cate Blanchett. The other is Pat Garrett in the scene with Richard Gere as Billy The Kid as Dylan. Following so far? OK. This is now my opinion, and this may well not be what Todd Haynes intended in the movie, but I’m going to throw it out there. In the Pat Garrett scene, the idea is that Garrett is the only man who was able to understand, and therefore capture, Billy The Kid. And the fact that he is being played by the same actor as the British reporter indicates to me that the idea there is that this British reporter is the only one who really understands what Dylan is about underneath all the enigma and bluster. Or, at least, he is the one who comes closest, who hits closest to home, and thereby is the only one who traps Dylan, the way Pat Garrett trapped Billy The Kid. This is just my opinion, and in watching this film you may well come up with some other explanation. But I certainly do hope you watch this film.
Six terrific performances, especially that of Blanchett, and brilliant song after brilliant song would make any movie good. What makes this movie great is that it so wonderfully mirrors the work of the man it canonizes. No one, including Todd Haynes, truly understands Bob Dylan. Many would go so far as to say that list of people who don’t understand Bob Dylan includes Mr. Zimmerman himself. So attempting to explain him is an exercise in futility. The only alternative, if one wants to pay tribute to this man, is to craft a movie the way Dylan crafts a song. Haphazardly, with a big picture only you can see, and if people get it, great, if they don’t, that’s great too. The idea here isn’t to get I’m Not There. The idea is to watch it, let it happen to you, and let it pique your interest, and then watch it again. And again, and again, and again. This movie is absolutely terrific.