I'm Not There

[Brian in Mesa]

I'm Not There

Release Date: November 21, 2007 (limited)
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Director: Todd Haynes
Screenwriter: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman
Genre: Drama, Music
MPAA Rating: R (for language, some sexuality and nudity)
Website: I'm Not There

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Ben Whishaw, Marcus, Carl Franklin, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood

Plot Summary: "I'm Not There," the highly anticipated biographical film about legendary singer and songwriter Bob Dylan, follows six distinct characters, depicting different stages of Dylan's life, embodying a different aspect of his life story and music. It's the first biographical feature project to secure the approval of the music legend.

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[AZZenny]

Saw it with friends this afternoon. Caveat: First of all, I grew up following Dylan, even earlier than most people. I hung out a bit in the Cambridge, Mass folk scene, and one of my friends from my first shot at college was the daughter of a successful East Coast folksinger who knew Dylan very well. So I knew a whole lot about him going in.

I'd say, if you never liked the album Highway 61 Revisited, this movie is probably not for you, because that's sort of the structural model.

If you saw the very good PBS 2-part documentary a year or two back about Dylan from the beginning up to his Motorcycle crash, then imagine that pumped up on Acid and steroids, and you have a rough notion of this movie. It is unapologetically surreal, which I appreciate, and the subtexts, inside jokes and storylines, the personalities, all are really well-crafted.

The acting is pretty amazing. How a 12-year-old black kid can BE early Dylan (while not even pretending to be Bob Dylan) -- the facial twitches, phrasing -- AND Cate Blanchett can equally BE the exhausted, self-destructive Dylan, is simply mind-bending. The other actors do somewhere between really convincing to loosely interpretted. Heath Ledger is excellent as a non-Dylan parallel (he plays an actor who played one of the Dylan-versions in a movie and became rich and famous) showing a hint of Dylan's marriage and the human side of him that did buy totally into the money and fame lifestyle.

It needed much tighter editing in the last half, which was a lot more narrative than the wonderful first half (they could have cut 15 minutes easily), as if 'now that we've established the style, we can relax.' The cinematography is also excellent.

So - I really liked it, as did the friends with me, and the soundtrack is great.