The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect

I am a bit of a Bob Dylan fan. I got it partly from my parents, who were into the folk scene - although my mother had to forbid me from listening to Bob Dylan before breakfast in high school. I have often been mistaken for a Minnesotan due to my adopted Dylan accent, and I celebrate "Talk like Bob Dylan Day" every May 24th. I read Tarantula, Positively 4th Street and Dylan's autobiography.

So, guess how much I liked I'm Not There? That's right, a lot. This is a deep, complex film with some very creative ideas, brilliantly executed. And that's putting it lightly.

The basic idea is an imaginary biography of fantasy Bob Dylan. He is played by 6 actors. The youngest is a 11-year old black hobo who calls himself Woody Guthrie. The oldest is Richard Gere in western drag in a kind of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid/Woodstock/Basement Tapes milieu. In between we have Christian Bale as Jack Rollins, a Sing-Out-style folksinger and Heath Ledger as Robbie, a young rebel actor who plays Jack in a bio-pic. Later, we get Jack Rollins as the born-again Christian Dylan.

In the middle we have Ben Whishaw as an effete poetic Arthur Rimbaud, facing a kind of inquisition, and the best part, Cate Blanchett as Don't-Look-Back-era Dylan in England, named Jude Quinn.

I have a lot of analysis of this film, but I'll skip it for now to say - Blanchett is amazing. The film has the look of the Pennebaker documentary, and her impersonation is spot-on. I just recently realized what a pretty-boy dandy Dylan was in that period, and having him played by a woman is perfect. Sadly, she doesn't sing - Stephen Malkmus does them for her bits.

(Digression - the music is sometimes the original Dylan, sometimes covered by someone else. That surprised me. Somehow I expected all covers or all Dylan.)

Other sweet bits: Charlotte Gainsbourg as Dylan's (I mean Robbie's) French wife. Mainly drawn from Sara Lowndes, but she also imitates Suze Rotolo from the Freewheelin' album cover. Another is Julianne Moore doing a brilliant imitiation of Joan Baez. She is sitting in a nice home with Ethan Allen furniture, fiddling with a big turquoise bracelet and talking about this little twerp who wrote these amazing songs. This isn't quite something Baez would really say, but seems to get at the heart of a concept of her and her relationship to Dylan.

Which is the idea of this movie - to get at the idea of Dylan, not the reality. Dylan the dreamer and storyteller, Dylan the failed husband and missing father, the sinner repentant, and the crazy poet. All of these Dylan's are quite obnoxious, annoying really, and yet we love them or at least, find them fascinating.

That's a funny thing about this movie - it shows Dylan as a jerk, but it makes you love him. Ms. Beveridge is not a big Dylan fan, and couldn't watch Don't Look Back because Dylan was just too abrasive. But this she found fascinating. I don't know why.

Disclaimer - I am not sure this movie will be of any interest to people who don't know that Dylan dropped out of public life for a period after a motorcycle accident. For the film gives the impression that he dies in that accident, in scenes that recall the end of Lawrence of Arabia.