‘I don’t know who I am most of the time...’
When I initially fell in love with the music of Bob Dylan, I fell hard. My dad (God rest his soul) introduced me to Highway 61 Revisited and I adored that album from the first time I heard it. From there, I devoured Dylan’s ’60s and ’70s output before moving on to my next obsession – as is the way for any teenage music fanatic. I’ve seldom revisited Dylan’s work in the intervening years which perhaps explains why it has taken me so long to get around to Todd Haynes’ 2007 Dylan biopic I’m Not There. Regardless of the reasons, I should have got here sooner. This is an exceptional portrait of a remarkable artist…
Charting various points in Dylan’s life, some of them imagined, some of them represented through characters in his songs, some of them more straightforward, Haynes uses a cavalcade of talent to create an experimental mosaic of one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw all represent different aspects of Dylan’s life and music. It’s an utterly unique storytelling device fitting for an artist riddled with contradiction and chaos.
Blanchett gives perhaps the most accurate portrayal but each interwoven section of the film reveals something else about what makes Dylan tick. Bale is superb. Franklin effervescent and rouguish. And while the narrative structure will be too unconventional for some, I would take this strange and gripping storytelling technique over a thousand other plodding, join-the-dots music biopics that have become so ubiquitous in recent years.
I’m Not There is mystical, maddening, beautiful and impossible to pin down, just like Dylan himself. I loved it. I loved it enough to make me dust off those long-forgotten records I wore out as a kid.