Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There” is a whirlwind of artistic expression. He takes the audience on a manically hypnotic journey into the weathered soul of one of America’s finest rock legends while completely reinventing the biopic in the process. With its sweeping melodic fortitude and eccentrically spaced-out collage of cinematic whimsy, this film gives six actors an opening to personify Bob Dylan in such a way that even non-fans should feel enamored by his grassroots approach to modern songwriting.
In a year full of pedestrian sequels and mindless noisemakers (Transformers, anyone?), to experience a film such as this is to remind yourself that innovation and bravado are still very much alive in a culture dominated by widespread commercial profiteering.
Marcus Carl Franklin is the youngest actor to dig into the Dylan oeuvre and also the first one the audience gets intricately acquainted with. He takes the name of Woody Guthrie and travels from town to town singing the praises of unionized labor with a quirky dust bowl twang that earnestly channels the working-man’s rugged mentality.
The sheer simplicity of his performance is what really works here, because in a situation that often breeds overacting, he shines with a youthful exuberance that is unquestionably genuine. I challenge anyone not to shed a smile during his spirited rendition of “When the Ship Comes In,” because it’s one of the truly great moments this film has to offer.
Just as we begin to enjoy Franklin’s soulful crooning, the film shifts to a grizzled folk hero named Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), whose music has ignited a frenzy of civil rights activism and led to his ensuing venture into the realm of coffeehouse evangelism. Bale’s inspiring take on Dylan during his Greenwich Village days evokes deep-rooted sentiment in its attempt to explore the poetic nature Dylan often toyed with. By duplicating the soft-spoken delivery he displayed in “3:10 to Yuma,” he handles the material with a level of finely tuned comfort that never strikes a false note.
At this point, Haynes has maintained a minimalist tone that worked effectively during the early segments, but the dynamic entrance of Cate Blanchett quickly changes everything. Her sizzling characterization of pill-popping free spirit Jude Quinn radiates with a degree of brazen energy not seen in many other films this year. The imaginative choice to cast a female in this role should be recognized, because Cate digs uncannily deep and comes up with a tour-de-force so exquisitely orchestrated that an Oscar nomination is surely in her sights. This is indeed the most spot-on portrait of Dylan and may very well be THE performance of the year.
The astonishing magnitude of these three sections more than compensates for the parts such as Richard Gere’s misplaced Billy the Kid that don’t come away with the same measure of success. Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s depiction of Dylan’s failed marriage operates with considerable emotional depth, but I still felt something was missing to help them really take off.
Even with these minor missteps, Haynes has engineered the most original and vigorous film of the year and staked his claim as a major force in modern filmmaking. I think the point of using six actors to assume these diverse Dylan incarnations is that everyone has their own picture of who Bob Dylan is and none of them are necessarily accurate. He is a never-ending enigma whose every move urges to be examined until nothing is left except the man and his music. Judging from this film, I think he’d like to keep it that way.
- **** out of 4
No comments:
Post a Comment