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11/26: I'm Not There - http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.co.nz/2007/11/1126-im-not-there.html

I've seen a lot of people asking what exactly Todd Haynes' I'm Not There has to tell us about Bob Dylan, itsostensible subject. This is, of course, the wrong question. Moreover, it's the question that Haynes' film is specificallyintended to short-circuit, to avoid, and it's likewise the question that Dylan has structured his career around hidingfrom. He's not there, not in this film, and not in his music either, not the way anyone ever wants or expects him tobe. I'm Not There has a lot to say, but not necessarily about Dylan, and not necessarily in the easily digested bitesthat seem to be desired by those doing the asking. The question implies that the film should dissect Dylan, explain

him, relate key incidents in his life without artifice and show how the music is related to the life. That's what biopics do,right? It's a damn good thing this isn't a biopic.

What it is, is something much more complicated and beautiful. Haynes has taken Dylan and fragmented him, thrownbits and pieces of his persona, music, and chameleonic life into six different characters, all playing various ghosts of aliving Dylan who's shed or absorbed all these aspects of himself to create whatever he is now. There's Marcus CarlFranklin as Woody Guthrie, an eleven-year-old black boy who's still anachronistically riding the rails in 1959,seemingly living in an earlier era in the time of burgeoning civil rights protests. There's Christian Bale as Jack Rollins,the protest-era Dylan, pushed onto stage by Joan Baez stand-in Alice (Julianne Moore) to belt out his heartfelt sociallyconscious songs. And Bale returns later in the film for a second turn as Pastor John, Jack transformed into a deeplyreligious minister in a reflection of Dylan's 80s turn to God. In between these two poles, there's Cate Blanchett in ashockingly powerful portrayal of Jude, essentially the mid-60s, gnomic burn-out Dylan as depicted inPennebaker's Don't Look Back. And Ben Whishaw as Arthur (Rimbaud, naturally), the sensitive poet Dylan, whose

role consists entirely of cryptic non-sequiturs delivered to a panel of interviewers who inevitably bring to mind theMcCarthy Senate hearings. There's also Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor who once played the younger Dylan in amovie before heading into an increasingly bitter and disenchanted life. Finally, in the film's weirdest diversion, RichardGere plays Billy the Kid, a nod to Dylan's scoring of (and cameo in) Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

This diverse cast comprises a series of Dylan echoes, referencing and riffing on the musician but never quite formingany composite portrait. Haynes has blended these different elements together, not chronologically in terms of theirplace in Dylan's career, but in a dense free-associative montage that's constantly switching between stories, musicalnumbers, and meditative abstractions anchored by Kris Kristofferson's narration. As a fan of Dylan's music with acasual knowledge of his life, I was able to follow the web of associations pretty easily, as the film skips nimbly aroundfrom image to image. I'd imagine that non-Dylan fans would be missing out on a lot here, since Haynes doesn't makeit easy to parse the complex accumulations of Dylan doppelgngers and coded references that are packed into almostevery scene.

I myself was initially puzzled by the Billy the Kid sequence, wondering why Dylan's Pat Garrettsoundtrack (musically aminor work) was being given such prominent treatment, until I realized that these scenes occupied a space within thefilm akin to Dylan's motorcycle crash and subsequent retreat to record his Basement Tapes with the Band. Thissequence's retreat to the past mirrors Dylan's own retreat to America's musical past following his accident, drawing on

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through the carnivalesque town of Riddle (what better name?) recalls the circus imagery of any number of Dylansongs, as well as the assemblage of downtrodden and outrageous characters from "Desolation Row." These kinds ofassociations, references, and evocations of lyrics make up the very fabric of this film. Still, I think the film has plenty tooffer even complete Dylan neophytes, in terms of the sheer beauty of its imagery, the wonderful tapestry of Dylan'smusic (mostly originals with a few new performances) that weaves through the film, and the idea of artisticrejuvenation that's embodied in Haynes' treatment of Dylan's many faces.

I hear that nagging voice again, though: so what does all this tell us about Dylan? Again, the wrong question, and onethat's ironically a variation on the probing questions asked of Blanchett's Jude by a British journalist, who keeps trying

to pin down Jude to a sound-bite-friendly clich. This is probably the finest scene in the film, and Haynes allows it tomorph slowly from a tense Q-and-A session into a nightmarish, noir-inspired music video of Dylan's "Ballad of a ThinMan," with the journalist as Mr. Jones, who just knows that something is happening but doesn't understand what it is.Eventually, disturbed by Jude/Dylan's refusal to provide pat answers or give the TV-ready stock phrases that theseleading questions demand, the journalist airs a program in which he "exposes" Jude's roots as an ordinary, suburbanJew from an affluent family. Does this reductionism to the question of roots, of background, explain anything aboutJude or Dylan?

Of course not, and though such explanations and questions aren't Haynes' interest, he doesn't shy away from the coreof Dylan's art, the shape-shifting nature of Dylan's persona, always inaccessible but otherwise quite different from oneincarnation to the next. In fact, Haynes embodies this eclectic sense of personality not only in his multiple Dylans, butin the stylistic melange with which he surrounds them, drawing on his obviously rich filmic knowledge for a web ofcinematic references every bit as dense as his musical ones. The Jude sequences draw most obviously on Don't Look

Back it would be impossible for Blanchett's sneering, mumbling, leather-clad impersonation not to recall the Dylanof that era but more subtly these scenes reference Fellini's 8 1/2with its warped visages of hangers-on, and in turnWoody Allen's own Fellini homage inStardust Memories, with murals on the walls reflecting the character's innerstates.

Even more than Fellini, though, this is Haynes' channeling of Godard. I've always thought that Godard, possibly myfavorite director, has had a purely superficial impact in terms of the impact he's passed on to other directors. OnlyFassbinder ever really seemed to "get" Godard and take his influence in a truly interesting direction, while countlessother directors latched onto jump cuts and other surface aesthetic features. With I'm Not There, Haynes has arrived asanother truly Godardian filmmaker, in the best possible sense. Yes, there are some of those kinds of surface aestheticreferences, right down to the way the introduction of the film's title text, letter by letter, plays off of differentcombinations to alter meanings: I, I'm here, I'm her, I'm there, I'm not her. Likewise, the scene where Jude and his/herelectric band literally machine-guns an audience of folk fans, before symbolically machine-gunning them with the force

of their radically rule-breaking music. Haynes also plays with machine-gun rhythms in the periodic repetition of theportraits of his six Dylan stand-ins, and certain scenes specifically recall One Plus One orMasculin feminin. ButHaynes has also absorbed Godard's influence in more subtle ways. Indeed, the film's essay-film structure, seamlesslyblending narrative fragments with more ruminative interludes and purely abstract montage with poetic/philosophicalvoiceover, would be impossible without Godard's example.

Haynes has also taken Godard's example as to the importance of the soundtrack and its relation to the imagery,though there's nothing specifically Godardian about the way that Haynes uses sound here. The only similarity is thedenseness of the sound, the complex layering, not just for the interplay of different sounds, but the meaningscontained within them. Dylan's music is of course ubiquitous, his lyrics frequently commenting on scenes. Sometimes,ingeniously, Haynes allows the lyrics to comment even if they're not being sung yet. The noirish dream sequence Ialready mentioned was initially a bit mystifying, until I realized that the music from "Ballad of a Thin Man" was loopingunderneath it, and as I mentally filled in the lyrics they began to mirror and comment on what was happening on

screen and moments later, when the vocals actually begin, there's an echo effect, as well as, probably, a momentof realization for those not already familiar with the song.

I have absolutely no trouble calling I'm Not There a masterpiece. Haynes has crafted a film that, in saying nothingabout Dylan, says everything about the nature of artistic experimentation and adaptation, the many ways in which artcan be political, and the attempts of the cultural elites to impose their own neatly ordered narratives on the messy,shifty, angry artist. Haynes rejects such narratives out of hand. His narratives here are more like Dylan's own"narratives," in his story-songs like "Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," in which the semblance and structure ofa story being told is belied by the poetical nonsense that comprises it. Haynes embraces that nonsensical spirit, andthe result is one of the finest, sweetest, warmest evocations of artistic expression imaginable.