I’m Not There (2007)
Anyone who writes about movies in any way has, at one time or another, probably had an imaginary review tucked away before they even see the film in question. Maybe parallel reviews, one a rave, one a pan, one a bit of both, and then they see the film and match the result to the most appropriate of the two or three phantom templates. I walked into Todd Haynes’ sorta Bob Dylan exploration, I’m Not There, with the idea that I would probably write a polite little three or three and half star thing where I mention the beautiful craftsmanship, the brave performances (Cate Blanchett has gotten all the attention, but all of the Dylans are extraordinary in their own way) and leave it at that, having seen the film primarily for the fact that I want my Best of to be as complete as possible.
I’m Not There demolishes this attitude. The film demolishes everything really: the biographical format, past and present tense, the nature of identity, etc, etc. The film recalls Natural Born Killers in that it’s a total explosion of form. I’m Not There is thrilling, obsessive id, a film that needed to be made by its creator. The film is defiantly, confidently art house, but it lends the term credibility again. The film isn’t so much about the unknowability of Bob Dylan, as it is about unknowability period, how personality is defined more by atmosphere than we’d ever care to admit.
I’m Not There also simply makes the music movie thrilling again. The music explodes out of the film in torrents of inexpressible need and exhilaration. The film had me, about fifteen minutes in, as we see Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) play “Tombstone Blues” with a bunch of old bluesman on a porch somewhere in the legendary, ultra photogenic South. This is what other music films, in their cloying obligation to be all things to all PG people, have usually missed: the pure, intangible, salty necessity to play music with strangers somewhere in a place you barely recognize.
The film manages something else: it questions the mystique of Dylan, the self-important lack of self-importance, and totally buys into it at the same time. I’m Not There could almost be said to be structured as a chase film, with Dylan, in his various personifications, on the continued run from people who wish to explain and contextualize him. Reporters, lovers, anyone. I’ll confess: I think the Dylan of the 1960s and 1970s, is, obvious brilliance notwithstanding, an insufferably pretentious ass. The music rocks and works just like everyone says it does, but the cryptic double speak of Dylan’s interviews has always driven me a little batshit. The film, in its loyalty to this aspect of Dylan, becomes tedious for portions of the second half; we’re drunk on Haynes’ extraordinary skill and hung-over on Dylan’s poetry in equal measure. The film is exhausting and I was about to write it off as a stunt that’s not quite the sum of its intentionally desperate parts.
Then all of the strands, the Woody Guthrie, the Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), the Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), the Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), the Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), the de facto narrator Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw) reach an existential crescendo of despair that overwhelmed me. The title track kicks in and the scope of Haynes’ intentions crystallizes in one of the more emotionally cathartic and shattering things to be seen in a film of 2007. This what is what David Lynch achieved in Mulholland Dr. and didn’t quite bring off in his even more ambitious but troubled Inland Empire: a gut punch of primal need, a portrait of a person or persons so lost in themselves that they are incapable of any connection with another human being. The characters’ devotion to their craft is the connection and possible salvation, and the film is honest in refusing to hint at whether this may or may not be enough. That is the hauntingly elusive answer of I’m Not There.
The film needs to be seen several times to be properly digested. It’s dense and live wire. Unhinged, reckless and extraordinary. I’m Not There may even be a movie that I see and hate the next time I see it, but I will always be grateful to Haynes for the experience I initially had. For all its indulgences and warts, I’m Not There is one of the ultimate artist films, one the ultimate chaos of the 1960s-1970s films and one of the ultimate time travel Fellini pictures all rolled into one big, bursting, unwieldy package. In short, Haynes has made one of the absolutely unmissable movies of the year.
★★★★
December 28th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I was too much of a chickenshit to give this a proper review and only managed a dithering capsule.
So first of all, bravo for laying yourself on the line with a difficult movie, but special congrats for nailing it in a good way.
“I’m Not There could almost be said to be structured as a chase film…” I think that’s one of the smartest things I’ve read about this movie and I hadn’t really thought about it in quite that way.
Perhaps I should see it again and take another stab at reviewing it.
My favorite moment was the Tombstone Blues number on the porch with Marcus Carl Franklin and Richie Havens and also the final image of the ‘real’ Bob Dylan. That last image nicely brought the movie full circle in a way. You go into the movie thinking you know a little something about the guy, then the movie procedes to explode what we think we know and even chews away at the idea of whether we can really know anything at all, and then it finally shows the man and now we’re forced to ask ourselves the same question we’ve asked of the movie “Is that him?”
Kind of your classic circular mindfuck and I’ve just done a uniquely horrible job of describing it.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Thanks for the kind words. I was feeling a little iffy on this review, primarily because an essay ten times longer could be written and still not quite get it. I cut quite a bit out, such as comments on the interactions between the Dylans, because they bogged the review down. It sounded like a college thesis written at three in the morning after a six pack and who knows how many bong hits.
So let me just say this: the people who have an issue with Richard Gere are missing something BIG about the film. It’s like saying you loved everything about Touch of Evil except Orson Welles’ performance, how do you like Touch of Evil if you don’t like Wells? Billy the Kid’s discovery of Guthrie’s guitar is one of the very best moments of the film, and Kid’s connection to Quinn is also extremely moving.
David Edelstein of New York Magazine, a perceptive and sharp writer, said he felt that Haynes failed to dramatize the various Dylans’ need to become one another. I disagree, and I cite the Gere scenes as Exhibit A in my defense. And what about the use of Bruce Greenwood as a bridge between the Kid and Quinn?
I’m not sure if my circulatory system will be able to handle seeing I’m Not There, Sweeney Todd, and There Will Be Blood in less than a week of one another.
Also, I haven’t gotten to it yet, but Walk Hard’s failure to click is a real shame, because its one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time.
December 29th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
“It sounded like a college thesis written at three in the morning after a six pack and who knows how many bong hits.” I think you just described my blog.
I’m glad you went with this review and I only wish I’d had the stones to do my own. I have to fight the urge not to sound pretentious anyway, and reviewing this movie would’ve just been asking for trouble.
Anyway, I think the Gere part came late in the film and people were worn out, plus it’s one of the more obscure aspects of the Dylan persona and it threw people. They’re wrong of course, but what can you do?