I'm Not There

This is an interesting image and word-play on Dylan's life and music. I'll just list out the disparate personalities and tell you all how it works out. There's always a deep sense of familiarity with this movie anyway if you're anyhow knowledgeable about Big-Nosed Bob.

"Woody Guthrie" - Using a black kid to portray his troubadour years is a stroke of genius. And Marcus Carl Franklin really is an excellent actor and singer. The hyperkinetic acoustic version of "Tombstone Blues" with Ritchie Havens and the solo "When the Ship Comes In" just bristles with energy, recalling, I dunno, a young Leadbelly, perhaps.

"Arthur Rimbaud" - merely snippets of an interview for college, maybe. Nothing much here, just Bob's oft-quoted anecdotes. Works surprisingly well, though.

Jack Rollins/Pastor John - the protest perios comes off rather effete, really, due to Christian Bale's understated whimsical portrayal. Mostly seen in the eyes of the Joan Baez simulacra, Alice Fairbairn. The grizzled fire and brimstone preacher phase is stirring, though, with an excellent rendition of "Pressing On".

Robbie Clark - the actor who played Jack Rollins in a movie. Heath Ledger's character is merely to capture the more mundane aspects of Bob's life. As such, he marries a Suze Rotolo-type character and the highly documented (on Blood on the Tracks, anyway) divorce is shown in its minutest details. The reconciliation sex just before the separation is deeply moving.

Jude Quinn - this is the most familiar of them all, the popular phase of his mid-60s electric albums and as such, the best bits of the entire movie. Cate Blanchett fleshes him out pretty well although if you have any slight interest in this period, there is no new enlightenment on Bob.

"Billy the Kid" - this bit with Richard Gere leaves me perplexed, though. Is Todd Haynes trying to show Bob's self-isolation after fame? Is it another allegorical tale in the vein of John Wesley Harding's many songs? Is it an extension of the "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" movie? This part doesn't seem all that congruent to the rest of the movie and does not appear familiar at all, at least to me.

On the whole, though, I enjoyed this a whole lot and I suspect, does more to Bob's legacy than stuff like "Across the Universe" (never seen it) does to the Beatles'. Some nice surrealism as well, Woody being swallowed by a whale in the river, Jude and band firing machine guns at the audience during Newport '65 (hardly that revolutionary, don't think it's that hard to piss off folkies), Jude dancing with the Beatles, a giraffe appearing in a settler town during the "Billy the Kid" sequence. The cover versions are mostly good, except for Christian Bale's rather fey voice. Yeah, two thumbs up.