Revisit:
I’m Not There
Dir: Todd Haynes
2007
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
There’s something ill-conceived about the life-spanning biopic, especially when we’re talking musicians. The Rays and the Walk the Lines of the world take a person’s entire life and compress it into two hours, complete with character arcs and contrived through-lines. This seems a disservice to the subject, who is (hopefully) more interesting than the three-act structure could ever permit. Why give standard treatment to exceptional people? If Biggie Smalls is so great, then why does his movie suck? More importantly, why would you give this treatment to Bob Dylan, the enigmatic musician of a dozen phases? God help us when his life is reduced to montage.
Todd Haynes isn’t interested in turning life into Oscar-grabbing fiction. He wants to hold his biographical subjects to the light of the projector and study them. In 1998′s Velvet Goldmine he fictionalized David Bowie and Iggy Pop as a study of the glam movement and youthful music obsession, drawing parallels between the persona-obsessed Bowie and Oscar Wilde. With I’m Not There he swings the camera over to Bob Dylan, splitting the man — his musical phases, personalities and paradoxes — into several people, each played by a different actor.
The first major scene in the film suggests a normal biopic. A young Bob Dylan hops on a train and introduces a pair of hobos to the man who would be king. However, it’s not Bob but a little black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) who calls himself “Woody Guthrie.” Despite all the mythological, bluesy milieu of rail riding, this section is a portrait of the artist as a young musician — the obsessive with an encyclopedic knowledge of the blues who practically imitates his idol, right down to the “This Machine Kills Fascists” label on his guitar. Imagine being young and imitating your favorite rock star, singing cover versions before creating your own. Ben Whishaw’s “Arthur Rimbaud” is a similar (though more visually accurate) version of this mimetic innocence, though instead of quoting the poet Rimbaud he quotes Dylan himself. Before we come up with original things to say, we quote that which influences us.
Other interpretations of old Bob range from the oblique (Richard Gere’s Billy the Kid) to more literal depictions like Cate Blanchett’s Newport Folk Festival-era Jude Quinn and Christian Bale’s Slow Train Coming-influenced Jack Rollins, though it’s never a clear view, personal of Dylan. On top of the fictitious names, there’s always additional distance. Not only do we Jude Quinn through black and white Richard Lester Hard Day’s Night documentary-style lens but also through Blanchett’s imitative but compellingly androgynous performance. It’s the most appealing segment of the film not only because of Blanchett’s performance but also for Haynes’ playfulness, throwing in spectacular bits of surrealism (the infamous Newport “electric” performance rendered as machine gun fire) and portraying Dylan at the height of his controversy, seemingly betraying his legions of followers amidst a disastrous UK tour.
Similarly, Haynes portrays Rollins as another musician who has changed from the days of his popularity, but in a more mysterious light. Unlike Quinn, Rollins has not betrayed his fans but rather has mysteriously vanished in favor of a relatively obscure life of faith. For most of the film, we only see him through archival footage and photographs until the last half-hour of the film — no longer the thoughtful folk singer but now a pastor and gospel musician with a wicked ’70s afro.
Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger) is the actor who played Jack Rollins in a movie — a potent metaphor for the person behind the performer. This is the part of the biopic where you show Dylan’s personal life as his relationship with his wife (whom, of course, we met so cute and fresh-faced at the beginning) crumbles, but rendered without the context of Ledger playing Bob Dylan. It is here that Haynes supplies novelistic narration from Kris Kristofferson as well as allows Bob Dylan’s own music to come in and underscore the events of this subplot, like ghostly, disembodied voices looking for a body.
I’m Not There is a fractured view of Dylan as Haynes shatters the figures at the beginning in an attempt to put him back together over the course of the film. As such the pieces overlap — some actors reappear in multiple segments as different characters. Some versions of Dylan even exist in the same narrative universe, but never quite intersect. Haynes deconstructs to reconstruct. The film ends with an actual appearance from Dylan in the form of documentary footage of him performing — the man’s been put back together, but he’s still the mythological Dylan of the 1960s. Wisely, we never see the man as he appears in 2007 — that’s not the Bob Dylan we’re celebrating, really. We’re celebrating the icon captured in documentary footage and photographs and recordings — and what better way to do that than in a motion picture?
by Danny Djeljosevic
