Todd Haynes
I'm Not There

Certainly not an easy film. But who said that Bob Dylan's life has been/is easy?

As far as we know, his personality is among the most complex and controversial of the twentieth century. Is Dylan really "not interested in anything at all"? Or is he simply "terribly interested in making people believe so"?

Certainly not a linear film. But linear is not what Bob Dylan is either, at least when it comes to his public persona. That’s why Todd Haynes decides to have six different actors portray 7 sides of the singer-songwriter's personality and periods of his life.

Christian Bale is Jack Rollins (the politically active Dylan of "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'"), who then has a mystical crisis and withdraws from the music business, becoming an evangelical preacher (obviously a representation of the Christian period of "Slow Train Coming", "Saved" and "Shot Of Love").

Cate Blanchett is Jude Quinn, the Dylan of the mid-sixties electric shift, flamboyant and seemingly detached from everyone and everything. Is it a coincidence that this character, also played by a woman, is the one most physically resembling the true minstrel of Duluth? Perhaps Haynes wants to suggest that during this period, Dylan expressed the most truthful side of himself? To posterity the arduous judgment, or rather to each of us, since these are entirely personal thoughts and perspectives.

Richard Gere is the famous Billy the Kid who, in addition to recalling the film for which Bob Dylan curated the soundtrack (and acted in a small secondary role), represents the songwriter’s "dark side", his being a bit of a thief, a bit of an outlaw. An outlaw who then defends his country and his people, emphasizing that there is never just one perspective when it comes to Bob Dylan. Everything is double, everything is ambiguous and ambivalent.

Heath Ledger is Robbie Clark, an actor who plays Jack Rollins in a movie dedicated to him and who meets Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who will later become his wife. Clark is thus the representation of Dylan’s private life (the love story with Sara, the legal issues for the custody of his daughters...).

Ben Whishaw plays a young man who introduces himself as "Arthur Rimbaud" (one of Dylan's greatest influences), who throughout the film does nothing but speak as if responding to questions, quoting phrases and thoughts of the American songwriter.

Marcus Carl Franklin is instead the young Woody Guthrie (a reference to another personality that had a tremendous influence on Bob Dylan), an 11-year-old boy with incredible musical talent who, towards the end of the film, will visit the real Woody Guthrie, dying in the hospital, just as the real Dylan did. In fact, many anecdotes and legends about Robert Zimmerman's life are cited in the film, such as, for example, the episode of the first electric concert at Newport and the legend of Pete Seeger being so scandalized as to want to cut the electric cables.

The poetics of Bob Dylan is even implemented in this film, made into concrete reality, represented in every period, from "you walk into the room with your pencil in your hand, you see somebody naked..." to "they sat together in the park, as the evening sky grew dark". There is all of Dylan in this film, at least the significant moments of his work. Haynes avoids the risk of the usual banal and rhetorical bio-film and seeks to penetrate the confused and dark soul of one of the greatest musicians and writers of all time. One must know Bob Dylan extremely well to appreciate "I'm Not There", one must know his songs and his life, the events he faced, and his thinking. You cannot afford to get distracted for even a moment.

A dense, hallucinatory at times, always ambiguous and interpretive film. A difficult movie? Yes. A pretentious film? Yes. An arrogant film? Brash, convoluted, snobbish? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Just like Bob Dylan.