I'm Not There Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)December 23rd, 2007
I'm not There
A Movie Review by Jonathan Moya
Rating: A or 4.5 out of 5 stars
The Review:
Todd Haynes did a thorough deconstruction of the 1950's Hollywood style in Far From Heaven. Under the smooth golden light and all the coded tension he revealed the gay throbbing heart of all those Douglas Sirk melodramas. The outing ditched the Hayes Codes, kept the pulp and in the process elevated a gentle satire to something greater than the original.
Likewise Haynes faux Bob Dylan biopic I'm not There uses style and poses to unmask our times ultimate stylist and poseur. If it doesn't really explain the original it is because the Grand Jester knows how to keep a good joke to himself. If I'm not There isn't a better Dylan it is just as interesting.
Haynes and his co-scriptwriter Oren Moverman (Jesus' Son) have created six Dylan reflections-four of them real, one historical, and one mythic-poetic. Their perfectly dramatized stories, shot in the dominant style of their times (grainy 16mm color, Kodachrome, 35mm Panavision and Black and White) are intercut on the same plane, bump up to each other but never merge.
The mystic chords of the Dylan musical inheritance are bundled up in the eleven year old black Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin). Guthrie is a mass of contradictions: a unionist zealot who is too young to work; a spouter of folksy wisdom who weeps homesick blues songs from his battered guitar; a runaway whose ever shifting lies never allow him to find a permanent home. He is a bluff forever taking off for the nearest boxcar whenever someone gets a little to close to his secret. Dylan's own musical genes doom him to wandering and reinvention.
And when the interrogation gets too close the reinvention begins. The folk singer (an earnest Christian Bale) yields to the hipster poet (Ben Whishaw) when the anthems change nothing and the faithful question the lack of revolution; and when the establishment press digs close to the façade of the rock idol (Cate Blanchett) that utters gnomic code and lives the mod life in London with the Fab Four it yields to the Hollywood star (Heath Ledger) enduring a failed marriage and artistic malaise. Even his alter ego character, Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) retreats when it's Sheriff Pat Garrett demolishing the homestead in the name of progress.
Like a Dylan song I'm not There can mean everything and nothing. All the biographical facts are there, and all the six stories and reflections refract with dramatic action and resolve themselves in traditional ways. Everything points to meaning and moral points are thrown about like party confetti, but the dots don't connect- just more riddles and questions. I'm not There is biography as metafiction. And Dylan, who easily acquiesced to the use of the music and his life incidentals is in keen agreement with Haynes little inside joke. Think of it as six characters in search of an author. Like modern art it is more about the feeling than the meaning.
Cate Blanchett's performance as the Dylan known as Jude Quinn is I'm not There's crystal beating heart. The post folk break Dylan shocked his followers with an electric ballad. It was a transformation as radical as a sex change. Haynes plays it for all its literalness-- the thin dike in the black suit and tie with the spaghetti hair existing on bennies and cryptic attitude in the middle of rock n roll London becoming the stand-in for the eternal masculine-feminine, the Dylan stuck in the middle and in between the middle of everything, the chaos that comes before faith.
Blanchett plays her Dylan as a Mona Lisa smile. There is a scene where Jude shares a taxi with John Lennon (that other Cheshire Cat of music) and an interrogator (Bruce Greenwood) where all the recondite rejoinders become the slapstick expression of all rock star attitudes. When the two slap on black shades it become the first inside pop joke. This isn't just a dead on impression, it is great acting done with sunglasses and a laugh.
I don't know if Todd Haynes could do a great straight picture that isn't dependent on synthesis for its effect- but he does make a great argument for the protean Dylan. Without all the recreations there can be no great creation.
I'm not There gets an A.
The Credits:
Directed by Todd Haynes; written by Mr. Haynes and Oren Moverman, based on a story by Mr. Haynes; director of photography, Edward Lachman; edited by Jay Rabinowitz; production designer, Judy Becker; produced by James D. Stern, John Sloss, John Goldwyn and Christine Vachon; released by the Weinstein Company. In Manhattan at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.
WITH: Christian Bale (Jack/Pastor John), Cate Blanchett (Jude Quinn), Marcus Carl Franklin (Woody Guthrie), Richard Gere (Billy), Heath Ledger (Robbie), Ben Whishaw (Arthur Rimbaud), Kris Kristofferson (Narrator), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Claire), David Cross (Allen Ginsberg), Bruce Greenwood (Keenan Jones/Pat Garrett), Julianne Moore (Alice Fabian), Michelle Williams (Coco Rivington), Richie Havens (Old Man Arvin), Peter Friedman (Morris Bernstein), Alison Folland (Grace), Yolonda Ross (Angela Reeves), Kim Gordon (Carla Hendricks), Mark Camacho (Norman), Joe Cobden (Sonny) and Kristen Hager (Mona).
"I'm Not There" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sex, swearing, brief violence and drug use.
Copyright 2007 by Jonathan Moya
http://www.jonathanmoya.com/
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
