It's interesting how the two big music biopics from director Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There, use newly-created characters as stand-ins for iconic musicians. It's clear who these fictitious individual are supposed to represent, but Haynes commits to examining mythical musical figures through a lens that allows him an extra dose of creative freedom. In the case of I'm Not There, a film about Bob Dylan and yet also never featuring Bob Dylan, it allows for Haynes to treat Dylan like Duck Amuck treated Daffy Duck. If you changed everything about Dylan, his gender, his race, his age, his backstory...would you still be able to recognize him? Would the unique spirit of Dylan's music still come through?
What a fascinating thought experiment that immediately gives I'm Not There more of a substantive edge than your run-of-the-mill biopic. Even better, the actual execution of that concept is just as compelling as thinking about it. Despite being just the kind of storyline a filmmaker could get lost trying to bring to life, Haynes executes I'm Not There with a compelling sense of chaos befitting of its central subject.
The musician Bob Dylan is represented in I'm Not There by six different people. 19-year-old Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), runaway child Woody Gutherie (Marcus Carl Franklin), rock n' roll star Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), young movie star Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), folk singer Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), and elderly recluse Billy McCarty (Richard Gere). Flashes of similar behavior reverberate across these various individuals, such as the relentless tapping of the foot to indicate internal nervousness, but otherwise, the stories themselves intentionally occupy different realms. Haynes, who wrote the script with Oren Moverman, cuts across these individual storylines to give a greater perspective on who Dylan was.
If there is one recurring theme across these various incarnations of Dylan, it's the concept of looking out for others. In Gutherie's storyline, which sees this kid setting out on the road due to his family being incredibly poor, we see how someone could organically develop the attitude of looking out for oneself. Homes are temporary for Gutherie, friends are just people who could turn on you in an instant. Why not grow detached from the broader world? On the opposite end of that spectrum, the exploits of the older McCarty show the dangers of becoming too disconnected from other people. A highway is coming to destroy the town McCarty and other small-town folk calls home. When he inquires why he didn't know about this development sooner, McCarty is simply told "You don't get out much."
I'm Not There may be about Bob Dylan but this facet of the production is relevant to all moviegoers. It can be easy to want to duck out of the world and sometimes it's even necessary to maintain a sliver of your mental health. But in general, it's important to take a stand, to actually care about the broader world and the people who live in it. As seen in various parts of I'm Not There, particularly any scenes involving Quinn, that kind of worldview only leads to emptiness and alienating others. In exploring the importance of staying in touch with the world around you, I'm Not There unearths something universal in the story of a singular musician.
That theme provides a fantastic backbone for the entire story while framing the essence of Bob Dylan across seven different people in I'm Not There makes for a great reflection of how complicated the real-life man is. How can you boil down an artist of such enormous influence to a single person in a two-hour movie? I'm Not There simply chooses not to. It's one of many wonderful stylized choices evident throughout the movie. Haynes uses the inherently fantastical storytelling structure as an excuse to incorporate all kinds of memorably unorthodox imagery, such as a gigantic whale factoring into Gutherie's tale or a wacky entrance for a Beatles cameo.
The heightened nature of the story also gives Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman free rein to utilize unique filmmaking styles for each of the movie's different stories. The Jack Rollins scenes are filmed like a documentary, the Robbie Clark sequences use pronounced color grading in a way that evokes the colorful imagery of Jacques Demy while the McCarty scenes are told like a whimsical Southern fairy tale. I'm Not There is that rare film that's as stimulating for the eyes as it is for the heart. Dylan isn't the only artist whose versatility is showcased in I'm Not There. Haynes also gets to demonstrate that he's adept at so many different types of filmmaking through the various segments.
I've mentioned numerous times in the past how I love biopics that render famous figures as everyday people. I'm Not There doesn't just fit neatly into that subgenre but it also helped me realize why I love these types of movies so much. There's something comforting about these kinds of stories, I can hear myself in lines like McCarty saying "I'm one person when I wake up and a completely different person when I go to bed." In refusing to render famous faces as deities, artists like Todd Haynes are able to tap into something vulnerable that registers as deeply relatable to the viewer. Capturing that idea is one of many incredible feats I'm Not There pulls off as effortlessly as a leaf shaking around while blowin' in the wind.
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