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dr_biscuit, exactlyhalf and emily_shore at the Phoenix, to see I'm Not There, the innovative Bob Dylan biopic that reconstructs Dylan as six different individuals played by different people. I'd long been curious about it and was very glad that I went along. I'm not greatly familiar with Dylan's music (bar the contents of The Essential Bob Dylan) nor his biography (beyond what I remember from Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, which I watched when it went out on BBC 2 in 2005; but the film presents a thematic narrative, that while twisting around in chronological time (one sequence, that featuring Richard Gere as Billy the Kid, is placed in an environment more American Gothic than American Gothic, representing I think an America both innocent but enjoying its daring and experimental liberty, imminently threatened by a mass communication represented by the freeway and the motor car), is nonetheless consistent. Of the Dylans, the two outstanding performances are those of Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, a piece of transgender casting which makes absolute sense; and Marcus Carl Franklin as an eleven-year-old boy who travels the 1950s railroad calling himself Woody Guthrie (complete with 'This machine kills Fascists' written on his guitar case) and entertaining fellow hitchers, seedy fairgrounds (until he's thrown out) and his fellow (we assume) black poor and prosperous white folk alike with his renderings of Depression songs from the 1930s. The thought that is pressed upon Woody, 'Live your own time', lingers with me.
There are lots of beautiful performances and eerie recreations of sequences I recognised from footage included in the Scorsese documentary, including the Newport Folk Festival and Manchester Free Trade Hall concerts where audiences denounced Dylan's electric performances. In both these it is Cate Blanchett's character who incarnates Dylan. More slow-burning on the memory are Christian Bale as Jack Rollins, representing Dylan's early stardom as a spokesman of the protest movement and the folk revival, and his later embrace of born-again Christianity; and the dogged but nonetheless wide-ranging performance of Heath Ledger as Robbie Grant, the actor who comes to fame playing Rollins in a 1960s biopic and inherits his celebrity when Rollins seeks anonymity. Opposite Ledger is Charlotte Gainsbourg, stunning as Grant's painter wife Claire. She's come a long way since she loped across the Yorkshire moors as a greyhound-like Jane Eyre in the early 1990s.
This is often a very funny film. Everyone seems to have mentioned the Beatles, who appear as caricatures of their Hard Day's Night era selves crossed with the Keystone Kops manic energy of Help!; the looming presence of Allen Ginsburg (a gnomic David Cross) in Jude Quinn's life at the same time is also an effective caricature of another friend of Dylan's. Does Quinn's sometime lover Coco (played by Michelle Williams) represent a historic partner of Dylan, or the love affair with drugs Quinn has at this point in the film? Another actor deserving mention is Bruce Greenwood, who plays a British television presenter, Keenan Jones - whose connections recall those of Kenneth Tynan - determined to expose what he sees as the artifice and deception of Quinn, and then Billy the Kid's nemesis Pat Garrett, determined likewise to sweep away the valley and town where Billy has successfully hidden himself for decades, in the interest of building a freeway.
The soundtrack is outstanding, a mixture of original Dylan recordings and cover versions; the latter have been grouped together on the soundtrack album. I found I appreciate Dylan's songs more almost as part of a narrative; they appeal to a context, perhaps, which I don't always sufficiently grasp. I'm Not There is well worth your time.
dr_biscuit, exactlyhalf and emily_shore at the Phoenix, to see I'm Not There, the innovative Bob Dylan biopic that reconstructs Dylan as six different individuals played by different people. I'd long been curious about it and was very glad that I went along. I'm not greatly familiar with Dylan's music (bar the contents of The Essential Bob Dylan) nor his biography (beyond what I remember from Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home, which I watched when it went out on BBC 2 in 2005; but the film presents a thematic narrative, that while twisting around in chronological time (one sequence, that featuring Richard Gere as Billy the Kid, is placed in an environment more American Gothic than American Gothic, representing I think an America both innocent but enjoying its daring and experimental liberty, imminently threatened by a mass communication represented by the freeway and the motor car), is nonetheless consistent. Of the Dylans, the two outstanding performances are those of Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, a piece of transgender casting which makes absolute sense; and Marcus Carl Franklin as an eleven-year-old boy who travels the 1950s railroad calling himself Woody Guthrie (complete with 'This machine kills Fascists' written on his guitar case) and entertaining fellow hitchers, seedy fairgrounds (until he's thrown out) and his fellow (we assume) black poor and prosperous white folk alike with his renderings of Depression songs from the 1930s. The thought that is pressed upon Woody, 'Live your own time', lingers with me.There are lots of beautiful performances and eerie recreations of sequences I recognised from footage included in the Scorsese documentary, including the Newport Folk Festival and Manchester Free Trade Hall concerts where audiences denounced Dylan's electric performances. In both these it is Cate Blanchett's character who incarnates Dylan. More slow-burning on the memory are Christian Bale as Jack Rollins, representing Dylan's early stardom as a spokesman of the protest movement and the folk revival, and his later embrace of born-again Christianity; and the dogged but nonetheless wide-ranging performance of Heath Ledger as Robbie Grant, the actor who comes to fame playing Rollins in a 1960s biopic and inherits his celebrity when Rollins seeks anonymity. Opposite Ledger is Charlotte Gainsbourg, stunning as Grant's painter wife Claire. She's come a long way since she loped across the Yorkshire moors as a greyhound-like Jane Eyre in the early 1990s.
This is often a very funny film. Everyone seems to have mentioned the Beatles, who appear as caricatures of their Hard Day's Night era selves crossed with the Keystone Kops manic energy of Help!; the looming presence of Allen Ginsburg (a gnomic David Cross) in Jude Quinn's life at the same time is also an effective caricature of another friend of Dylan's. Does Quinn's sometime lover Coco (played by Michelle Williams) represent a historic partner of Dylan, or the love affair with drugs Quinn has at this point in the film? Another actor deserving mention is Bruce Greenwood, who plays a British television presenter, Keenan Jones - whose connections recall those of Kenneth Tynan - determined to expose what he sees as the artifice and deception of Quinn, and then Billy the Kid's nemesis Pat Garrett, determined likewise to sweep away the valley and town where Billy has successfully hidden himself for decades, in the interest of building a freeway.
The soundtrack is outstanding, a mixture of original Dylan recordings and cover versions; the latter have been grouped together on the soundtrack album. I found I appreciate Dylan's songs more almost as part of a narrative; they appeal to a context, perhaps, which I don't always sufficiently grasp. I'm Not There is well worth your time.
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