I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’s visionary biopic-in-six-parts boasts half a dozen actors playing Bob Dylan in different guises.
But Haynes, a postmodern deconstructionist director, treats each segment as a little movie of its own.
He’s rapturously attuned to the dirty secret of Dylan’s music — that it was never “folk,” and that the lyrics don’t matter nearly as much.
The movie works as a series of bedazzled epiphanies, whether it’s Cate Blanchett embodying the druggy hipster Dylan of 1965 as a sun-glassed celebrity enigma, or Heath Ledger touching the raw nerve of his marital troubles, or Christian Bale singing the 1980 gospel song “Pressing On” in Dylan’s Christian phase.
These ever-changing Dylans are distinct, even if they do not always flow into one another.
What unifies the movie is Haynes’ recognition that no one movie–or one actor–can capture the rich and complex life of an artist like Dylan.
Even so, some critics have dismissed it as overly ambitious–and excessively academic–too heady for its own good.
The movie was a commercial flop.
