I'm Not There

Did you read the title? Not my title, the movie's title (although they're the same). Read it again.

That's the point.

Probably the most important information in the film occurs in the opening credits:

"Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan."

Inspired by. Not a word-for-word Dylan biography from A to Z.
No doubt many people are walking in to I'm Not There expecting to see another Walk the Line or Ray, typical Hollywood biopics told from beginning to end in a more-or-less linear fashion.

That's not going to work with Dylan.

Director Todd Haynes wasn't trying to confuse audiences by portraying "Dylan" with six different actors. He was just very smart in realizing that one actor couldn't do it all and even if he could, how silly would it look onscreen? The Dylan faithful know and understand that Bob is, to put it mildly, a complex individual. Just be glad Haynes stopped at six incarnations. He could easily have done sixteen.

But he chose six. Six different actors to play "characters inspired by" Dylan:

An 11-year-old African-American boy named "Woody Guthrie" (Marcus Carl Franklin), complete with a guitar case with the painted-on words "This Machine Kills Fascists." (One of the greatest scenes in the film includes "Woody" singing "Tombstone Blues" with Richie Havens.)

An actor named Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger)

A coffee house folk singer called Jack Rollins (Christian Bale)

Rocker Jude Quinn (played by Cate Blanchett, who looks and acts so much like Dylan it's a little creepy)

Poet Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw)

Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) wandering around the Old West in a town called Riddle

Haynes throws all of these incarnations at you with no preparation, no road map, and no apologies. He's not going to lead you by the hand and show you a chronological "This is how Dylan got to be Dylan" narrative. These six stories intertwine, slip in and out of each other, coming at you from every direction. Sort of like a Dylan song. (For what it's worth, I found the Billy the Kid/Richard Gere scenes the most baffling, loaded with symbols and images that just moved too fast for me to process. Repeated viewings, repeated viewings...)

The film also contains endless references (with the names changed, of course) to Dylan events, places, songs, albums, films, literature, personas and much more. Half of the fun of the film (which, of course, demands repeated viewings) is in trying to make your own mental footnotes of everything you see in the movie. (For non-Dylanologists, just sit back and let it wash over you. Don't think twice, it's all right.)

And the music. It's pretty much non-stop, consisting of Dylan singing his own music and others covering him. (Dylan allowed Haynes full access to the use of his recordings.) Sometimes you'll hear a song from an era that does NOT match the era that's onscreen. That song is probably there for a purpose, which is also fun to try to figure out.

Now let's clear up a couple of misconceptions:

You think you've got Dylan figured out? You don't. You probably never will. I probably never will either. That's what makes Dylan Dylan. Every time you think you've got him figured out, every place you think he's going to be, he's not. (Thus the title.)

You think you're going to see the movie and learn some insights into Dylan? Forget it. For the Dylan uninitiated, seeing I'm Not There is sort of like taking a graduate level seminar without attending the prerequisite seminars. You'll recognize a few things here and there, but when it's over you're probably going to walk out of the theatre blinking rapidly, saying things like "What? What? What just happened?" Could be something is happening and you don't know what it is....

(One possible insight occurs early on. I won't tell you what it is, but it happens during one of the "Woody Guthrie" episodes as he's talking to an African-American woman about the songs he sings. It's so simple, but it's central to everything.)

So how about a straight answer? Is the movie any good?

I think so.

Is it great?

Don't know. As I said, it demands repeated viewings.

So come on, what's the movie about?

Read the title again.

Repeat.