I'm Not There: A

In one of many deep-dish symbolic explosions in Todd Haynes' rapturously inventive biopic I'm Not There, Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw) - photographed in graniest black & white - rattles off the six key secrets to master when in hiding...all while images of Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), Billy (Richard Gere), Robbie (Heath Ledger), and Woodie (Marcus Carl Franklin) go rattling by; each actor interpreting their figment of legendary musician Bob Dylan interpreting the particular secret revealed as the camera slows on their performance (while, simultaneously, Whishaw himself pulls off a similar feat). If it sounds too conceptual to work, the intoxicating surprise is that it does - thanks in no small part to Haynes himself, whose artistic sleight-of-hand allows numerous more occasions such as these to illuminate a film about a man persistently casting shadows.

Such is the texture of the film though: it searches and it rhapsodizes with a luminous visual mastery; it haunts and occasionally it saddens; and every so often it stuns you with the very transcendent rightness such a gifted director as this one can pull off when he, say, situates an identity-exploring journalist in the middle of late-60's Dylan performing "Ballad of a Thin Man".
These last moments of epiphany occur only a handful of times in such well-formed, piercing doses (such as when Billy gazes over an empty valley, ruminating on this-or-that War that may have inspired his dormant protesting; or when Jude Quinn gazes at Jesus on the cross and, with just the slightest touch of deepest depression, slurs out "Do some of your early stuff!") but instead of seeming as a flaw, these work as the highest points in a never-ending stream of conscious; the sort of stunning, sharp, inquisitive work the greatest documentarians aspire to and (apparently) only someone as willing to bend the rules of fiction, reality, "reality", and the poetic English language as Todd Haynes could have achieved. The result is a magnificent high for cineastes and Dylan-lovers alike.

Still sound sort of like homework to you casual viewers? Well then let me start at the beginning, with Woodie. Embodied by Franklin with a natural grace and humor, his segments serve as the foundation for the early minutes of the film, as we hear his story - grave and intriguing. First he was talented, then he was a failed carnie, then he hobo'ed, then he fell, was saved, was saddened, and hobo'ed again. Did I mention he was only eleven? And black? Again, if Haynes' sheer audacity sounds laughable, his dramatic conceit never strays from his intended vision and the work of this early Woody Guthrie groupie - "The Fake" as the film's narrator says - gives a reasoned flavor to the later, more theatrical incarnations of this once most modest of troubadors.

Flash forward (or rather, around - since the film would rather splice its characters together in a narrative circle than a chronological line) to Jack (Christian Bale), a NYC activist seemingly sprung from all the wholesome potential of Woodie himself; then it's over to Robbie, the movie star of a '65 film about Jack's rise to stardom in the folk movement; then we're back to Arthur, as he stares into the camera, answering questions from a disembodied voice, with a gaze that matches his words: calmly disaffected, sincerly insincere, and true in only the way that Dylan himself was. From Arthur we leap to Jude Quinn as he premieres his greatest artistic leap: going from acoustic to electric, and the fall-out from fans that necesitates. That collapse gives insight into another - the slow destruction of Robbie's marriage to Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); and from the drained voice-over of Legdger we are introduced to Billy, an outlaw holed up in a dying town full of circus workers always playing dress-up (need I spell out the allegory there?).

If my verbose description gives you a sense of the heady connections that I'm Not There lyricizes then more power to you, but if not then the film more than compensates (with Haynes serving up with the same sort of intensity he brought to Far From Heaven five years ago). It weaves a mosaic, a kaleidoscope dream, a fantasia of personality, an intricate dance of delusion & illusion, and an elusively sad composite work on the most prolific poet of our time; most grandly of all though, it accomplishes this all on a level of deeply satisfying power and magnetism. I could no less look away than I suspect Dylan could from creating himself more than these seven times over.

Which is all kind of the point right? As a musician, Bob Dylan certainly inspires the film, sets it aflame with passion even, but as a person? Some may be tempted to call the lack of articulate verbal explanation in I'm Not There "opaque" but I disagree: the mesmerizing currents of personality that are evoked in these 135-minutes more than answer any questions because they eliminate the need for them. See, Todd Haynes may have set out to create a rumination on the life & times of Bob Dylan, but he came away with far more; what he's created may lack the same sensational flow of emotion that graced Heaven but it's satisfying in almost every other way. It floats on the raspy visions of the folk legend's music; it savors the work of its own muses (Blanchett, wrapped up in a private breakdown, gives a great, fizzy, prophetic performance); and, above all, it treasures its audience - never losing a virgin to the ways of the music world, or an audiophile new to film.

It sermonizes with passion, zeal, and terrifyingly good directorial skill. It illuminates by layers the creation of a creation; the man created from a myth. And it beckons us all on for the ride, to dive into the flow - the visionary, holy, "meaninglessness" of Dylan's images - and discover Dylan as Dylan has always discovered himself. It is truly a journey worth taking.