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Biopic Looks At Dylan's Personae

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By CHRISTY LEMIRE, The Associated Press

Published: November 22, 2007

The music biopic is a genre that's so overly familiar - and so frequently addled with cliches - it's more than ripe for parody. (Look no further than the Judd Apatow-produced comedy "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," coming out later this winter.)

So you have to at least appreciate that director and co-writer Todd Haynes is trying to be bold and innovative as he takes on the tempestuous topic of Bob Dylan's life with "I'm Not There."

Haynes has cast six actors to play the music legend over various stages of his life, including a young black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin, who's a real find), Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett, with a nonlinear narrative that toys with time and visual style. And, come to think of it, none of these actors ever portrays someone named "Bob" or "Dylan."

If it sounds pretentious, that's probably because it is - not a complete failure, mind you, but an admirably ambitious letdown.

Dylan fiends will have a field day scouring the movie for minutiae (a pair of sunglasses, a line he murmurs at a news conference). But casual fans and those who know little about him will walk away with the nagging sensation that he's as enigmatic a figure as ever.

Maybe that's Haynes' point: that there is no way to truly understand someone who has been so complex and yet so influential for so long. But it's not exactly a satisfying way to spend more than two hours.

Haynes showed an obsessive purity of vision with "Far From Heaven" (2002), his vibrant homage to the 1950s women's picture.

With "I'm Not There," he ventures to the opposite extreme: The film is fragmented, a reflection of the myriad changes Dylan willed upon himself, a cubist experiment tied together only by the cohesive thread of his music.

Among the first depictions of Dylan from Haynes and his co-writer and old friend Oren Moverman ("Jesus' Son") is that of a skinny chain smoker who calls himself Arthur, as in Rimbaud, and who answers questions about his beliefs from unspecified accusers. He's played by Ben Whishaw ("Perfume"), and though he's meant to serve as the de facto narrator, he's the one who provides the least information.

Young Franklin's portrayal is one of the most compelling because he's such a tremendous natural talent and because he's the only one among all the actors who's doing his own singing. The 11-year-old calls himself Woody, as in Guthrie, and he rides the rails in the 1950s, winning over strangers with his songs and his precocious charm.

Next comes Christian Bale as the early '60s, protest singer-songwriter version of Dylan. He's known as Jack, and we see him through performances, fake documentary footage and interviews with folk contemporaries and scholars. Bale also appears later as the converted-Christian Dylan, and though there's always something intriguing about his screen presence, there simply isn't enough of it.

Heath Ledger is sexy and smoldering as always as Robbie, an actor and singer who plays Jack in a film biography. His story line includes a 10-year relationship with Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a French painter he meets in a Greenwich Village coffee shop who becomes his wife and the mother of his two daughters.

Which brings us to Blanchett as Jude Quinn, the Dylan of Dylan-goes-electric infamy, which Haynes cleverly depicts by having the singer and his band blast away at the audience of the Newport Folk Festival with machine guns. The casting of Blanchett may sound gimmicky, but she's riveting to watch - lanky, androgynous, jittery, evasive and combative.

"I'm Not There" turns downright insufferable with Gere as Billy, as in Billy the Kid, a nod to several of Dylan's inspirations and incarnations.

MOVIE REVIEW

I'm Not There **

MOVIE BOARD RATING: R (language, some sexuality and nudity)

STARS: Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett
DIRECTOR: Todd Haynes

LOCATION: See Movie Times on Page 5.

PLOT SUMMARY: Actors depict stages in the life of Bob Dylan.

RUNNING TIME: 135 minutes

ON THE WEB: imnotthere-movie.com/

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