This Dork Reporter always finds it inter­est­ing to pon­der his pre­con­ceived notions of a movie once he has seen it. The mar­ket­ing and buzz on I’m Not There mostly cen­tered on two talk­ing points: the quirky device of mul­ti­ple actors all play­ing incar­na­tions of Bob Dylan, and Cate Blanchett being just plain amaz­ing as usual (what else is new?). The first point is what gave me pause: how much sense would this film make to some­one who is not a Dylan fan and scholar?

All I really know about Dylan comes from the Mar­tin Scors­ese doc­u­men­tary No Direc­tion Home, and even that paints a sketchy pic­ture of the man. Dylan has been an enigma through­out his long his­tory in the pub­lic eye, often speak­ing in rid­dles, and (at least in his early years) invent­ing a fic­tional back­story. The press and even his own pay­ing audi­ences were often openly antag­o­nis­tic, so it’s no won­der he was so famously com­bat­ive and eva­sive. Pre­fig­ur­ing the modern-day chameleons David Bowie and Madonna, Dylan pre­sented a series of per­sonas: Amer­i­can roots folkie, polit­i­cal agi­ta­tor, rock ‘n’ roller, born-again Chris­t­ian, Hol­ly­wood actor, and so on. The ques­tion being: how much of this evo­lu­tion was sin­cere growth and change, and how much was per­for­mance art? Who is “Bob Dylan”?

An Oscar nomination’s a-gonna fall

Direc­tor and co-screenwriter Todd Haynes, hav­ing already decon­structed David Bowie in Vel­vet Gold­mine, tack­les the many aspects of Dylan per­haps the only way pos­si­ble: frac­ture his key facets into mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters. As with the Bowie ana­logue Brian Slade in Vel­vet Gold­mine, none of the Dylan fig­ures are actu­ally named Dylan, but then again nei­ther is Dylan him­self, whose actual sur­name is Zim­mer­man. Chris­t­ian Bale plays Jack Rollins, inter­pret­ing Dylan’s Chris­t­ian period, and Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid, a pretty lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tion of Dylan’s years in the wilder­ness after his fame peaked for the first time. Adding an extra layer of post­mod­ern com­plex­ity, the late Heath Ledger plays Rob­bie Clark, a film actor famous for play­ing one of the fic­tional Dylans in a biopic. And of course, Cate Blanchett is amaz­ing. As Jude Quinn, a reluc­tant celebrity fend­ing off the attacks of the press, she tri­umphs by avoid­ing mere impres­sion. Sure, she’s wear­ing a fright wig and shades, but her expres­sions and body lan­guage cap­ture Dylan’s para­dox­i­cally wordy elusiveness.

The result is part faux doc­u­men­tary, part fic­tion, but pro­vides a truer over­all pic­ture of Dylan’s com­pli­cated char­ac­ter than a mere biopic ever could. Per­haps at some point after his death (may that be a long time from now), we will see a con­ven­tional musi­cal biopic made of his life story (à la Bird, Ray, or Walk the Line), but I cer­tainly hope crit­ics and audi­ences will remem­ber I’m Not There.

Hey mr. gui­tar man

The DVD edi­tion is the only I can think of that incor­po­rates long on-screen text intro­duc­tions (more than one, in fact). Does this reflect a lack of con­fi­dence on the part of the film­mak­ers or dis­trib­u­tors in the home view­ers being able to com­pre­hend the film, or is it more in the vein of the schol­arly intro­duc­tions that pref­ace Pen­guin Clas­sics vol­umes? Either way, it only rein­forces the impres­sion that you have to be a Dylan scholar to appre­ci­ate the film (which, inci­den­tally, turned out to not be the case).

And finally, I detected a few ref­er­ences to direc­tor Richard Lester: Rob­bie Clark (Ledger) walks through the set of the 1968 film Petu­lia, dur­ing an early scene in which women in neck braces leave a freight ele­va­tor before a party to pro­mote high­way safety (attended by the likes of George C. Scott, Julie Christie, and the Grate­ful Dead, so it’s not at all unlikely Dylan could have been there too). But even bet­ter is the best Bea­t­les trib­ute I’ve ever seen: the Fab Four breeze through as the epit­ome of care­free fun, lit­er­ally speak­ing and mov­ing in fast-motion. They tempt Jude Quinn’s (Blanchett) desire to escape, until they are chased away by A Hard Day’s Night’s scream­ing sycophants.

Offi­cial movie site: www.imnotthere-movie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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