"I'm Not There"

This dazzling film explores the idea of Bob Dylan, "poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity."

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Bob Dylan, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews

Photo: Killer Films

Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There."

Nov. 21, 2007 | Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Bob Dylan?

That's the question Jean-Pierre Léaud asked in Jean-Luc Godard's "Masculine Feminine," a question so essential it was unanswerable, even in 1966. Léaud, as the hero of a film about the insecure (and touching) adamancy of youth, didn't frame it as a question, anyway. It was a summons, a demand, something you might say to a specter who has inexplicably appeared in the middle of your room: Reveal yourself, now! Who are you, anyway?

"I'm Not There" is Todd Haynes' version of the question, framed not as a demand but as a ballad sung in the language of movies, as if the only way to get to the meaning of Dylan were through another type of song. This Dylan -- this idea of Dylan -- is, as the movie's opening tells us, "Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity," although he is perhaps more a place than a person, an elusive destination that we -- that is, those of us who love his music -- keep traveling toward.

"I'm Not There" is a kind of accompaniment for our boxcar journey, made by a fellow vagabond on the road. Haynes is a storyteller with music in his pockets. His 1987 "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" used Barbie dolls to tell the story of the troubled singer; the picture is horrifying and deeply moving, and also nearly impossible to see. (Haynes didn't secure the rights to the music used in the film, and Richard Carpenter has barred it from ever being shown.) His 1998 "Velvet Goldmine" is an ardent and glorious reflection on the glam-rock era, a picture whose flaws frustrated me at the time, although nearly a decade later, I can barely remember what they were: All I can see now is its vitality, its glow. (That movie was also stymied by permissions problems: Haynes was unable to use any David Bowie songs.) "I'm Not There" is more complex and ambitious than either of those pictures, but it's so passionate, inclusive and joyous that there's no doubt it was made by the same guy. And this time, Haynes was able to secure permission to use the music: Dylan, through his management, granted the rights almost immediately, a fact that Haynes has recounted, with a sense of wonder and gratitude, in numerous interviews. (My own interview with Haynes can be read here.)

Because this is a biopic not of a man but of an idea, Haynes has cast six actors to bring it to life on-screen -- that's practically a Dylan for every day of the week, an embarrassment of riches that's manageable and luxurious at the same time. Not one of these Dylan personas is named Dylan: Haynes and his co-writer, Oren Moverman, have given them specific identities and shapes, each linked to an intangible something that we know -- or think we know -- about the "real" Dylan. Ben Whishaw (who starred in last year's "Perfume") is Arthur, the young, handsome, sharp-witted interlocutor who's dazzled by the legacy of the poets -- Rimbaud, et al. -- who have come before him. Christian Bale is Jack, an earnest poet of the people, a spokesman for the poor and the downtrodden. Marcus Carl Franklin is Woody, an 11-year-old black kid who lives on the road and who, like his namesake, totes his guitar in a case emblazoned with the words "This Machine Kills Fascists." Richard Gere is Billy, the outlaw who repeatedly eludes capture, but only by a hairbreadth. Heath Ledger is Robbie, not a singer but a movie star who rose to fame playing the lead in a movie about a Dylan-like singer, who has supposedly settled into a comfortable country life with his painter-wife, Claire (the superb, as always, Charlotte Gainsbourg), even though his real home, complete with numerous temporary girlfriends, is on the road. And, mightiest of all, is Cate Blanchett's Jude Quinn, a quivering, neurotic, sexually alluring elfin presence, a changeling, a bundle of receptors half-open to the world and half-guarded from it.

Each of these Dylans has his own story, and Haynes cuts those stories together in ways that make intuitive sense. Chronology isn't the point here. The picture has a dazzling, weblike structure -- its construction alone is seductively imaginative -- that feels whole and organic. When you get to the end, you know this is a story that's been spun, not mapped out on a storyboard. The editing here, a near-miraculous feat in itself, is by Jay Rabinowitz: Multiple narrative threads, involving any number of characters stretching across boundaries of place and time, overlap, break off and reconnect, often during the space of a single song. (Haynes has dedicated "I'm Not There" to Jim Lyons, his longtime editor, who died last April.) The look of the movie is as mercurial as its subject: Working with his frequent collaborator Edward Lachman, one of our most gifted contemporary cinematographers, Haynes gives us a movie that shifts from lustrous black-and-white to moody, somber color tones to dazzling countryside brightness. Haynes knows he's dealing with a life's work of words and music that demands multiple color palettes.

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