I'm Not There

Todd Haynes, the director of Velvet Goldmine and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, returns to musician biopics with a kaleidoscopic reimagining of the life and times of Bob Dylan
In the 1965 DA Pennebaker documentary Don't Look Back Bob Dylan explains to a 'Time' magazine journalist that 'the truth is a collage of pictures'. During the film, made just before he went 'electric', Dylan is anti-matter - in the process of destroying himself and those around him so he can emerge entirely changed. He meets, is fascinated by and repelled further by the English version of him, Donovan. In executing his image overhaul Dylan is impish, playfully dismantling the words, beliefs and assumptions offered to him by fans and journalists, insisting he is "just a song and dance man". Offered the biggest and brightest present, fame, Dylan found more fun in the cardboard box it came in. Todd Haynes pivots I'm Not There around this combustive time, representing Dylan's character through six different roles played by actors chosen to distill each element. With I'm Not There, Dylan's music strengthens each scene. Haynes opens up, again and again, like windows in an advent calendar, the side of Bob Dylan previously overlooked, his humour and his theatricality. Richard Gere is the reclusive, faded cowboy who Dylan played in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, representing his time holed up in Woodstock after his 1966 motorbike crash. Christian Bale is the earnest folk singer of protest songs who becomes born again in the late 1970s. Marcus Carl Franklin plays a young African-American boy riding the freight trains calling himself Woody Guthrie, representing the Dylan's early 1960s idolization of the then dying traditional singer. Heath Ledger acts out Dylan's private life, his marriage to Sara Lowndes, his philandering, and its break up. Cate Blanchett is the mercurial Dylan of Don't Look Back. And Ben Whishaw is Arthur Rimbaud, Dylan's lyric-writing literary side. The Heath Ledger strand draws upon Dylan's 'Blood On The Tracks' period, the album that charted the savagery of divorce. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays his wife Claire, and their meeting and marriage best fits the standard Walk The Line-style biopic. Both are very touching in their performances and provide an emotionally resonant core at the centre of the film's carnival of characters. Haynes does not sideline Claire; in fact he built the original idea for the film around the French actress playing a composite of Sarah Lowndes and Suze Rotolo, Dylan's girlfriend in the early 1960s and the girl on the cover of 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' album. Gainsbourg's performance is heartbreaking and their relationship is rendered tenderly, particularly in a scene depicting Dylan's sometimes chauvinistic and defeatist ideas. Haynes set out to present Claire and her position as emblematic of the womens' movement. She is a painter, as Rotolo was, whereas Lowndes was a former 'Playboy' bunny. The film is just as much a cut and paste mood board for the 1960s. It is a frank account of both the man and the time, and the contradictions and conflicts inherent in both. And for the endless books and articles written on Dylan, the breathless panting over every lyric, the forest of biographies, not one person has got as close to him. The master of disguise, Dylan has been out in public, on stage, every night, on his Never Ending Tour, for the last 20 years. And he continues to play around with his burgeoning sainthood, most recently advertising Victoria's Secret lingerie. He's not giving the finger, but a wink, to his fans. It is telling and a boon for Haynes considering the ferocity of these fans, that Dylan handed over his entire back catalogue for use in this film. Todd Haynes' previous musical biopic creations Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and Velvet Goldmine have shown his ability to balance style with substance to create poignant and pretty films. Haynes has taken the enigmatic quality of Dylan, and extrapolated it across the entire movie. Todd Haynes listened to Bob Dylan in his late teens and it was when he retreated to the country to write the screenplay for Far From Heaven, and at a strained time in his life, that he returned to Dylan and formed the idea of I'm Not There. Oblique and never explained by Dylan, the songs are open to the ownership of his listeners. Haynes was in a time of transition and noted his need to hear Dylan's music, and the songs he has picked are surprising, rarely heard tracks. The film inspires introspection, as Dylan's personality is investigated with compassion for the faults of all human beings, be they mythic figures or not.

In Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes' portrait of the glamrock era of the early 1970s had characters who merged the trinity of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop - his theatricality and flourishes fit well with the feather boas and poses. In I'm Not There, the director utilizes this showiness to create some fantastic sets to signify cultural streaks, including a Warholian party, a British garden party and even film sets within the Heath Ledger strand. Inventive and exhilarating skits represent the appearance of people in Dylan's life: the poet and Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol's muse Edie Sedgewick and, of course, The Beatles. His depiction of Joan Baez, here called Alice Fabian and played by Julianne Moore, although unflattering, is pitch perfect. Haynes uses the varying filmmaking styles of the eras, with nods to Robert Altman and Federico Fellini, to create an ever-changing tapestry. It is only when Haynes is too literal with his material that his direction becomes heavy handed. A crack at a quasi-music video within one narrative only goes to show that Dylan's music is too slippery, too much within the mind of its listener to be represented so directly. The film spirals to a somewhat untimely end, so enrapturing is the visual poetry that it could be watched for a further hour. Haynes represents events from Dylan's life with such imagination and dexterity, so that the viewer becomes curious as to how he might reimagine Dylan's time with The Band, or the 'Rolling Thunder Revue' tour, or the making of the 'Time Out Of Mind' album and his current Hank Williams inspired incarnation. The existence of icons can be suffocating. Like boastfully successful siblings they can be stifling, in constant reference and comparison when anything new arises. Todd Haynes has revitalized an icon, representing Bob Dylan as intriguing, wonderful and strange. When the final image of the film appears, Dylan himself in black-and-white, he is as curious now as he was then.
Verdict
A multifaceted diamond of a film. Todd Haynes joyously freewheels through the times of Bob Dylan.