I'm Not There (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

What makes the picture fun for Dylan fans--and potentially frustrating for neophytes--is that every album and movie bears an alternate title. Ledger's Robbie, for instance, stars in "Grain of Sand," actually a reference to the Pete Seeger song. As in Haynes' glam rock reverie Velvet Goldmine, the trickery involves the entire cast. While Julianne Moore plays former lover Alice, a dead ringer for Joan Baez; Michelle Williams embodies elusive scenester Coco, i.e. Edie Sedgwick. If I'm Not There is less affecting than Control, the year's other big music film, it rewards repeat viewings like few biographical features. The soundtrack mixes originals with covers, like Jim James's heartfelt "Goin' to Acapulco." --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Customer Reviews:

• no direction's (cinematic) home: Just who is Robert Allen Zimmerman (b. 1941)? We know him as Bob Dylan, a name he assumed in 1962, and everyone knows his music when they hear it. But knowing the man has remained a quixotic quest. This unusual film combines clever artistic sophistication with musical nostalgia but fails badly to shed any light on the "real" Dylan. Perhaps that was not the film's purpose, or perhaps its purpose was to present Dylan's personality as badly fragmented. Six different actors play six different Dylans, including Cate Blanchett who was nominated for an Oscar for her role. But we're never told any of the characters is Bob Dylan, so if you don't know this in advance you'll be lost. The six characters have different names and different stories that aren't related but instead jump back and forth in a non-linear fashion. All six Dylans make him sound like a cult-like philosopher who only spoke in mysterious Zen-Like koans. Some of what they portray follows Dylan's real life, like his conversion to Christianity or his periods of obscurity, but other parts are entirely fictional (becoming a movie star). The tagline says that this film was "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan," but in the end I was not sure what that meant.
• Bob Dylan In Flux. A Lot to Like, but Too Much Is Unwatchable.: "I'm Not There" is a sort of impressionistic biopic inspired by the life, times, and person of Bob Dylan. Dylan is represented by six different personas, but none called "Bob Dylan". The adventures of an 11-year-old runaway calling himself Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) are inspired by the fictional biography Dylan used to tell. 19-year-old Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Winslow) answers questions abut his choices put to him by an inquisition. Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) is a politically active folk singer who later immerses himself in Christian evangelism. Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger) is an actor whose personal life resembles Dylan's marriage to Sara Dylan and relationship with Suze Rotolo. Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) is a popular folk singer who angers his fans by going electric and abandoning politics. Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) is an aging rancher fighting a highway project in a dying frontier town.
  
  The segments about each of these six characters are shot on different film stocks, some color, some black-and-white, and interwoven in a semi-sensical fashion. Jude Quinn and Jack Rollins come the closest to literal representations of Dylan's life. You may recognize some other real-life characters in a folksinger named Alice Fabian (Julianne Moore), who resembles Joan Baez, and trendy socialite Coco (Michelle Williams), who resembles Edie Sedgwick. The Billy the Kid story is entirely fanciful and unfortunately tedious. He's a 19th century rancher fighting a 6-lane highway? Instead of embracing change, as many of Dylan's personas did, Billy resists it. But he does so in the most mind-numbing way possible. That segment would have been better left out or completely reconceived.
  
  Cate Blanchett has been praised for her portrayal of Jude Quinn, or Bob Dylan 1965-1966. There is a lot to like about this segment, not the least of which is that it has a sense of humor. It's also the most coherent, and the sometimes surreal black-and-white photography is a pleasure. Cate Blanchett does an imitation of Dylan, not an interpretation of him, similar to the approach she took to Catherine Hepburn in "The Aviator" (2004). It's an enjoyable performance, and she accentuates a fragility that was present in Dylan but which may have gone unnoticed. I like Christian Bale's passion as the Dylan that embraces causes, while the Blanchett and Clark personas are indifferent to them, but he has too little screen time. "I'm Not There" is more an exploration of identity and persona than of Bob Dylan himself. I suppose there is no better subject for such an undertaking than a man who changed his image many times. While some of the segments are intriguing, some were so tedious that I could not sit through them.
• actors almost ruin it-- but cant !!!: the movie was a good idea i guess-- its an interesting story-- this kid from hibbing rising to the top-which is really the bottom as he says in one of his brilliant songs-- to be at the top of a culture where the cult of celebrity rules over all and corrupts its artists as well as the people who buy into it-- its just too bad that almost aLL OF THE ACTORS WHO PORTRAY HIM -- HIS O SO VARIED PERsonas--- in his continual quest to stay ahead of the all consuming mass culture who would eat him alive and turn him into a static product-- its too bad they all over act or do these mostly embarassing imitations of the great enigmatic magician genius- the bright spots are the real footage of the era's depicted-and dylan singing his own songs--which thankfully he does quite a bit here- its just great to hear him in 5.1 surround sound !!!! so we have to suffer all these so called actors mucking up the works in every other scene-eroding the brilliance of not so much the man himself - but the very zeitgeist he seems to channel so effortlessly == its not the singer but the songs !! and the times they defined--- getting down his quirky mannerisms is the least of it all--but the movie is ultimately worth it-- because hidden in this quirky hodgepodge-- is the story of the struggle of any great artist-- esp one who has risen to the top of a game --one he ultimately sees thru and knows is a trap -- living up to others expectations--having to compromise ones self-- haVING TO DEAL W ALL THE SCOUNDRELS AND MONEY HUNGRY BLOOD SUCKERS who attach themselves to the next big thing like viperous leeches that can suck the life out of the best of them-- just look at lets say judy garland-- marilyn monroe elvis etc-- talented people who's very lives were laid waste by the great devouring soul destroying machinery of our sick culture and its cult of celebrity obsessions-- and dylan has quite succeeded of course--staying ahead -or is it behind ? of the gnawing teeth and preying eyes ---he knows how to retreat aND preserve his talent--- so the movie has its interests re these themes--- and some other real talent in this movie-- is in the short first scene w richie havens--- his voice is a tonic-- and his persona and talent about as real and true as they come---he adds a gravitas to the enterprise that is sorely missed as the story proceeds-- and the cast of sub par actors threaten throughout to bring the whole thing down every time they appear or unfortunately have to sing--- dylan cant really sing in any conventional sense--same w his harp playing--- but therein lies his particular genius-how it all works beyond all imagining ! but putting up w less stellar talent imitating him - without the ringing spark of genius behind it-- well its just unbearable -- but luckily someone else in charge here thought so too apparently-- because after every misstep w others singing his songs-- we have him in all his masterful glory retrieving the whole thing every time--restoring the soundtrack to the heights only he can attain--- so a lot of this is really painful to watch--- the ginsburg character was well done tho -his agent was almost as good----the insights of how dylan would re invent himself and shed personas others would otherwise entrap him in--- all interesting-- and what makes it all really worthwhile- is to hear the final song ---dylan singing his own song-- like a rolling stone--- a song that is so amazing- so thrilling-- it gives me the warmest thrills just to hear the first notes of its crazy jaunty artistry- an anthem of the era it defines- a one of a kind song of a lifetime--- but every one of his tunes is a revelation to hear --when hes singing them-- and the songs here are all well chosen-- some fairly obscure ones you dont hear often-- thankfully addding another rewarding dimension to this often frustrating movie-skip thru the embarrassing scenes of others trying to capture the quixotic & uncapturable genius---and revel in and marvel at the rest !!!
• Flawed But Periodically Compelling Collage of Dylan Makes for a Murky Character Study: I wish I was better prepared to accept the sheer audacity of Todd Haynes' wildly imagined take on Bob Dylan's life and legend because this 2007 film requires a certain mindset to accept a fragmented story thread that tethers together six disparate evocations of his persona. The conceit is that none of the personalities look remotely like him or have his name, which I believe is Haynes' main point, that Dylan is an enigmatic figure open to anyone's interpretation of who they think he is. Part of the frustration in watching the film is realizing that we don't know that much more about Dylan by the end. Most of the references to his checkered career in the screenplay co-written by Haynes and Oren Moverman will likely go past most viewers, even though many of the lines are direct quotes from Dylan. That's the most significant flaw of the approach taken here, that we are familiar enough with his life to make sense of the story being told.
  
  At the outset, we see Dylan as a black eleven-year-old who hops boxcars, writes folk songs as if he was living during the Great Depression, and goes by the name Woody Guthrie after his hero. Luckily, the precocious Marcus Carl Franklin is terrifically winning in the part. The second incarnation is Jack Rollins, a young 1960's-era folk singer with a political conscience played compellingly by Christian Bale. Julianne Moore, the star of Haynes' 2002 Douglas Sirk tribute, Far from Heaven, shows up in documentary-like footage being interviewed as a Joan Baez doppelganger. Bale also shows up later as Pastor John singing gospel songs reflecting Dylan's born-again conversion in 1979. With sometimes merciless bravado, Heath Ledger plays Robbie Clark, a Method-style Hollywood actor whose most acclaimed performance is of Rollins in a biopic. He gets married to a French girl, played affectingly by Charlotte Gainsborough, whom he eventually alienates with his obsessive, chauvinistic behavior.
  
  The most talked-about Dylan persona is embodied by Cate Blanchett, physically transformed into Jude Quinn, the male singer who achieves the pinnacle of his success in the mid-1960's only to face harsh criticism for going electric with his music. Looking more like a morosely arrogant k.d. lang, the actress gives a convincingly unapologetic performance as the drug-addicted musician whose media sound-bites were becoming a cynical series of non-sequiturs meant to make fools of the press. In the film's weakest passages, a rather somnambulant Richard Gere plays the latter-day Dylan as Billy the Kid in a surreal, San Peckinpah-influenced world set in the tense western town of Riddle. British actor Ben Whishaw rounds out the Dylan parade in a few faux-interviews as Arthur Rimbaud, a young rebel named after the tortured poet. To emphasize the differences among the Dylan interpretations, Haynes uses different film stock and narrative styles to tell the stories and then further convolutes matters by scrambling the disjointed fragments into a nearly random collage. Dylan's music is used throughout, sometimes as background, other times by contemporary performers lip-synched by the actors. His voice is an almost ghostly presence until he finally shows up playing his harmonica in 1960's-era documentary footage at the end.
  
  Part of me is genuinely impressed with Haynes' experimental-feeling narrative and how his film is imbued with an adventurous spirit that doesn't hold much concern for an audience's sensibilities. That's also the rub since it's difficult to have a feeling for an admittedly mysterious subject when the portrait is made up of six shards of a broken mirror. The two-disc 2008 DVD set provides plenty of extras starting with Haynes' rather elliptical commentary track. Also on Disc One are four text pieces under "Intro to Film", one describing the film's six principal characters as facets of Dylan. Disc Two contains six shorts featuring each of the characters replicating the famous card-dropping in Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video. There are also two deleted scenes, four alternative/extended scenes, and an outtakes reel, the total of which runs about a half-hour. Audition tapes of Franklin and Whishaw and a tribute to Ledger are also included, as well as footage from the New York premiere and a twenty-minute featurette on the making of the soundtrack. The centerpiece of the second disc is "A Conversation with Todd Haynes", a portrait of the filmmaker running about 45 minutes that has Haynes talking about the genesis of the film and how it was made. More Dylan-specific text pieces and two theatrical trailers round out the extras.
• The parts create a mysterious whole: This complex and very artful movie captured that elusive spirit of what makes a person create. What shapes a person's perspective and pushes him or her to express their soul? This is not a movie that goes from point A to B, so if you go in expecting that, it would be a confusing disappointment.
  To me, the movie described how Dylan was influenced by sources outside himself, and how it all melded inside him and then in his passion, he could express himself in his own unique way. Which is what we all do when we create, don't we? Even if not creative geniuses, we are all products of our pasts, dreams, memories, wishes, and present experiences
  It was magical to me how the actors and actresses took their own influences and melded those things to help them create their characters, their essences.
  Fantastic score- a mix of Dylan's recordings and other fine artists covering his songs. The only actor who sang was the brilliant 13 year old Marcus Carl Franklin who played Woody Guthrie. Breathtaking acting skills and singing, Marcus was channeling something beyond his years.
  The others lip sinc'd, but were so convincing.
  Cate Blanchett was incredible, she used just enough of Dylan's vocal style and body movements to create him as an androgynous tortured soul, but she didn't impersonate him. She was using herself to create the essence of how she perceived him.
  Heath Ledger, all I could keep thinking while admiring his sensitivity and quiet depth was " Forever Young"... Charlotte Gainsbourg was perfect, such expressions in her eyes and unusually beautiful face.
  I would highly recommend first reading Dylan's own book Chronicles, before you see this movie. His book explains so beautifully his passions and influences, and that knowledge helped me go with the flow...I think I might have been a little more mystified had I not read it. Also watch the Martin Scorsese documentary. It all helped me to get into the feeling place to experience the movie, and above all Dylan's music, on an emotional non-linear level.
  I would also recommend letting go of logic and then give the movie a try, just relax into it as if in a dream.