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I'm Not There (the Dylan movie starring Heath)

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Ellemeno:
More Bob Dylan photos from his Isle of Wight era 1969, that Heath is representing:

From the official Band website


From the Encyclopedia Britannica (!)

Ellemeno:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=477761&in_page_id=1773

MaineWriter:
Dylan Movie I'm Not There an Oddball Effort

By Ray Bennett

VENICE, Italy (Hollywood Reporter) - Todd Haynes' highly impressionistic docudrama "I'm Not There" is "inspired by the life and work of Bob Dylan," though pop's leading troubadour is not mentioned, barely seen and not heard very much in the production.

Instead, an eclectic mix of actors including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere portray characters whose lives run parallel to or are informed by Dylan's life. There's plenty of the singer-songwriter's music on hand but sung by others. Filled with incidents that echo famous moments in Dylan's life, the goal is to summarize all the disparate elements in his career.

A long film, at 135 minutes, it's difficult to see who the prime audience will be for the picture, screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival. It's a curiosity that could delight or turn off loyal Dylan fans and may prove too oddball to draw in younger and mainstream audiences.

The guiding principal of Dylan's life is declared right at the start as a character who calls himself Woody Guthrie, an 11-year-old black guitar picker played by Marcus Carl Franklin, is advised to "live your own time, child, sing about your own time."

Woody rides the rails and tells stories about the days of the Depression, but in another incarnation, Jack Rollins (Bale), he starts to create the songs that stunned and inspired a generation.

The film jumps all over the place, introducing Arthur (Ben Whishaw), a view of the man as young poet, and then as an actor named Robbie (Ledger), who shows his romantic side. Many scenes are given over to Jude Quinn (Blanchett), the colorful, wisecracking Dylan from the '60s. But then it's back again to Bale, only now he's Pastor John, in a role that illustrates the performer's Christian conversion and decade as a gospel singer.

Finally, there is a passage about Billy the Kid (Gere), who survives his encounter with Sheriff Pat Garrett to live a quiet life in a place named Riddle until events conspire to bring him to public attention again.

Haynes directs all of these people and places with great flair, helped immensely by cinematographer Edward Lachman and his mostly inspired cast. Whishaw, an intense young British stage actor who played a serial killer in the European hit "Perfume," speaks directly to the camera, while Bale inhabits both the younger Dylan and the religious convert with typical concentration.

Gere is effective in the Western sequence, though that segment's relevance is difficult to grasp. True, Dylan co-starred in Sam Peckinpah's film about William Bonney.

The star of the show is undoubtedly Blanchett, who has great fun playing Dylan as a showboat who quite knowingly goes about creating his reputation for rebellious independence.

Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar put together the musical soundtrack, which features the obscure Dylan title track dating from his "Basement Tapes" sessions with The Band at Woodstock in 1967. There's also a new cover version by Sonic Youth.

The film is said to have the endorsement of Dylan, which must have taken some courage given the ragged edges of his life on display. But the film fits well with his singular ability to reinvent himself while really putting us nowhere nearer to fully understanding the man.

Cast:

Jack/Pastor John: Christian Bale

Jude: Cate Blanchett

Woody: Marcus Carl Franklin

Billy: Richard Gere

Robbie: Heath Ledger

Arthur: Ben Whishaw

Claire: Charlotte Gainsbourg

Allen Ginsberg: David Cross

Keenan Jones: Bruce Greenwood

Alice Fabian: Julianne Moore

Coco Rivington: Michelle Williams

Director: Todd Haynes; Screenwriters: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman; Producers: Christine Vachon, James D. Stern, John Sloss, John Goldwyn; Director of photography: Edward Lachman; Production designer: Judy Becker; Music: Randall Poster, Jim Dunbar; Costume designer: John Dunn; Editor: Jay Rabinowitz.

oilgun:
Here are a couple more reviews:

http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2007/09/sixy_muthafer.html


--- Quote ---Sixy Muthaf-er
It seems just like a gimmick, yes, it does
It jumps time just like a gimmick, yes, it does
And it aches just like a gimmick
But it breaks down just like a classic tale.
I’m Not There is all there. Six, six, yes, six Bob Dylans in all, the latest from Todd Haynes seems to aspire to an excess of clever and a dangerous dance with pretense, but remarkably, in a 2 hour 18 minute running time, turns out to be a very demanding, but very clear-minded piece of filmmaking.

The “clever,” as you have probably heard, is that the start of Dylan’s artistic life thorough the period slightly after Nixon resigns/he was divorced by Sara Lownds, when in the film, Dylan gives up on the idea that his music could change the world in a politically weighty way, is portrayed by six sides of his personality, represented here by young Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Wishaw, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, and finally, in repose, Richard Gere.

Haynes and his co-writer Oren Moverman’s screenplay jumps through time hoops with the seeming abandon of wild animals in a circus act, but as at the circus, any thought of it being a natural act is a false one. It is well rehearsed and considered to create the feeling of spontaneity and even randomness. Each of the Dylans – none actually named Bob or Dylan – is simply a manifestation of one man’s complex personality. And remarkably, as the circus passes you by on screen, you are still free to make your own decisions about who this man was (and I use was because the film really does end with the end of the period in which Dylan wrote his most famous songs).

Dylan was, apparently, a quiet collaborator here… at the very least, allowing his songs, his vocals, and his personal life to be used for the project. You may recall the Scorsese doc on Dylan, which assiduously avoided discussion about his wife and mother of his children and even the songs that many have ascribed to being reflections of that relationship. Haynes clearly had no such restrictions here, as he not only uses Dylan’s first/major marriage (albeit rather loose on details), but the alleged relationship with the pseudonymonous Edie Sedgwick (a subject which caused great rage by Dylan against the film Factory Girl last year), and even his near-decade as a born-again Christian.

In fact, one could easily say that this film puts all the blame on Dylan’s plate and almost mocks the born again period by dispatching it so quickly, while all the while making Dylan’s shoulders seem so big that they could easily carry any weight. At times I felt like Haynes was falling into hero worship, but by the end of the film, I think that even my feelings were just a reflection of some pretty direct propositions. Basically, watching a guy who thinks he is King Shit can be infuriating, not because the filmmaker is necessarily agreeing, but because that guy is simply infuriating. Rage is, on some level, proof of the filmmaker’s honesty.

The six performances are all quite good. The standout is Blanchett, who also has the challenge of two breasts and no scrotum, though there is a purpose to “Dylan’s” faminization in that period of his life as well.

I’m Not There is a classic example of a film with a singular conceit that the filmmaker deserves accolades for and which at the same time needs the audience to – perhaps in multiple viewings – get past the conceit to see what the filmmaker is really after. I would argue that understanding the time jumping conceit makes plain why the excellent-but-overrated Pulp Fiction is so overrated (the time leaps are less significant than sold and mostly keep the film from a weak ending that was a story flaw from the start). Here the metaphor of the different sides of the man, which evolved over time, but each of which also made “appearances” at time when other “Dylans” were the primary, is much, much more than a gimmick.

I also think this movie is a classic example of one where the first viewing is really just a toe in the water. If ever there was a movie made for the DVD era, this is it. (I wouldn’t bother to try to watch any longer clip than four minutes on an iPod… even the larger screen version due this Christmas.) Haynes & Moverman find a richness in this 10 year sliver of Dylan’s life – again, a conventional biopic choice to narrow the breadth of the story that is not really consciously on the surface of the film, which never feels like any conventional bio-pic – that is further set throbbing by Haynes’ choices as a director.

(Note: I am making a point of mentioning Haynes’ co-screenwriter in no small part because of how disturbed I have become at the movement to make all films connected in any way to Judd Apatow into “Apatow’s films,” which is a horrible throwaway of the work of a lot of very talented people – directors and screenwriters included – and an overstatement of Apatow’s current muscle, based on commerciality as much as anything else. Those of us who cover this stuff for a living should be the first ones to hold ourselves in check about stuff like this, as opposed to leading the charge for a premature mythologizing of any talented person, which Apatow obviously is.).

Unlike something like Eyes Wide Shut, I don’t think this puzzle is a Puzzle Movie, designed to be uncoded by exacting eyes and minds. Haynes always brings layers to his work. But the film is so densely packed – even if it is 20 minutes overlong for ticketbuyers who distinctly put their energy on low flame in the theater at about 1:40 and rejoined the film in full around the 2 hour mark – that you can’t really read it in one sitting. You can, as Greil Marcus commented while presenting Haynes before the film, take away moments that you feel are definitive. (Personally, I did not. For me, it was the collage that drew me in.) But that is mostly, I think, because you need to make your choices on first viewing about what you want from that viewing. And I am pretty sure that the next time and the time after that and probably a few times after that, you will be finding new flavors in a soup that is a pleasure to each every time it is served,
--- End quote ---


http://aslittleaspossible.blogspot.com/2007/08/telluride-day-1-im-not-there-is-chase.html#links


--- Quote --- Telluride Day 1: I'm Not There is a chase movie
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- First impression, written furiously as mountain thunder crackles in the distance:

I'm Not There is a chase movie, and it plays like the lovechild of Cameron Crowe (the music worshipper) and David Lynch (master of splintering the psyche).

No one in the movie plays a character named Bob Dylan, but they all play physical and/or emotional representations of Dylan. Christian Bale plays a folk music hero, Heath Ledger plays the actor who plays the folk music hero in a film, Cate Blanchett plays a folk music hero who goes "electric" and alienates his fan base. Richard Gere plays Billy the Kid. Ben Whishaw plays a "poet" named Arthur Rimbaud who is under interrogation. The overly charismatic preteen Marcus Carl Franklin plays a boy named Woody Guthrie who's trainhopping away from a troubled childhood.

All these characters add up to the essence of Dylan as he changed over his career, and they are all running from something. In this way, I'm Not There is a chase movie. It's about men who are constantly trying to outrun fame, the media, conformity, themselves, their loves, the law and so on. They are trying to excuse themselves from their current reality. Look at the title.

Blanchett arrives late and owns the movie. She and Bale play the pre- and post-electric Dylan, but Blanchett is the axis on which the film spins. She is a joy to watch. She looks and acts like Dylan. There is little artifice. It is fascinating. Why did Todd Haynes want a woman in the part? I don't know. But it works as a ballsy experiment, and Blanchett proves she can pull off absolutely anything.

The movie jumps back and forth between narratives and time periods (think Velvet Goldmine) that are connected by music and images and feelings and tones. It's a pastiche, a four-dimensional quilt. It is a wildly ambitious, verbose, confusing movie with an epic goal: to understand a character, and his place within and without his generation, and then to subvert that understanding with more questions than answers. For better or worse, I'm Not There is a movie that needs to be studied. It has many apparent intricacies. If you want to compare it to bedding, it has a very high thread count. It glows with the same kind of thick, beautiful vagueness as Lynch's Mulholland Dr. does. We have the pieces of the puzzle and we have some idea of how to assemble them, but once we do we don't get a definitive picture. Rather, we're left with colors and patterns and moods and tones and suspicions. Can it be assembled in more way than one? Or should it just be appreciated in its parts?

The bottom line: Telluride reaction is mixed. As tired as I was, I didn't nod off -- even as it dragged laboriously and wrecklessly into its third hour. Haynes' sweat is very visible. The screenplay is a feat. There were moments of transcendence, though -- moments when I was utterly thankful for Haynes' vision and ambition. I need to see the movie again in order to understand if it truly extends beyond its experimental nature, but I can say this for sure: This is Haynes' magnum opus. And even if you hit the wall at minute 120, it's worth sticking with until the end, which features cinema's sweetest, slowest fade out ever.

--- End quote ---

MaineWriter:
The movie poster from Venice:

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