I'm Not There (2007), Todd Haynes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368794/

****1/2















Ben Whishaw, as one of the facets of Dylan, giving his name as "A-R-T-H-U-R R-I-M-B-A-U-D" early on was my "OH, this could be *good*" moment.

Well. Bob Dylan gets the Velvet Goldmine treatment (and with his own blessing, unlike Bowie).
And Todd Haynes doesn't do biographies. He weaves stories around some idea of his own by way of mishmashed biographical details and whatever else it takes.

I concur with the majority opinion that the single best thing about this film, if you're looking to isolate a single best thing, is Cate Blanchett. And note that I've never been a fan of hers, not even close. But here... here's how it goes, she both naturally looks *and* is made to look more like Dylan than any of the other actors and manages all those Dylan mannerisms in a heavily theatrical way, of course Dylan was theatrical but she's like doubly so for doing an evidently studied reproduction of the theatrics, so she looks like Dylan and at the same time she looks like a girl and sounds, ahem, *sort of* like a guy and the singing voice-overs are definitely masculine and the whole androgynous effect is well, hot. Couldn't take my eyes off of herhim.

(The Cate segment ostentatiously borrows a lot from Fellini's 8 1/2, but imo there's also a bit of Toby Dammit there in the dynamics of a certain interview and after-party.)

Christian Bale's stuff is endless parody. Just haha after haha.

The little kid and Gere segments felt like the weakest overall, but worked alright as parts of the whole.

Haynes' use of soundtrack is incredible. Yeah, you could say that's easy to achieve, given the source material, but no, as in Velvet Goldmine, I'm blown away by his clever track selection and the timing and fitting of tracks to scenes. The Ledger/Gainsbourg segment is really ennobled by its soundtrack (with "I Want You" and "I'm Not There" as bookends to a marriage).

(Some whining about the soundtrack album: with one exception, it only contains covers - although most of the songs in the film are originals - *but* doesn't contain possibly the best cover of all, the hellishly brilliant "Hollis Brown" by Iggy & The Stooges (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZBs8UZzTs)).

A lot of VG motifs and some themes recur here (fake interview footage and commentary, the fans&press vs artist and self-reinvention themes taken to a whole new level; and Rimbaud is used much like Wilde is in VG, though not as extensively, as Dylan's own song lyrics and quotes provide a lot of the material). They didn't feel like recycling, though, as the finished products are clearly distinct and both hold their own.

What the films most significantly have in common, though (with each other, as well as with Haynes' "Far From Heaven"), in the way they affect me, at least, is the almost catharsis-inducing sense of inevitable, inefable and irretrievable loss that creeps in by the end. That is Haynes' trademark, as far as I'm concerned, and also what attracts me the most to seemingly everything he does.