How to peel a pomegranate...

Rating: 10/10 (14 December 2007)

Without a doubt one of the better films ever about music. I think back to others that have tried before: "A star is born", "Saturday Night Fever", "Coal Miner's Daughter", Milos Forman's "Hair", "Ray", "Walk The Line", even "Amadeus" , and really none take both the film and the music and fly with it the way that "I'm not there" does.
It is a powerful evocation of what Dylan means: to a generation, to a listener, to the heart. It is made with deep thought, a light touch, and great skill.
What makes this shine for my money is the combination of performance and expert directorship. This is not MTV video: it looks, feels, and sounds like mature film. It elicited a response from this viewer that has been missing all year in other films, for the way it is shot, paces, framed, lit, and sounds - and was dramatically different from the usual fare that is wholly linear or retreads others' ideas.
There is an aura of unique and original here and that makes it stand out clearly from the pack.
The blessing of Dylan is there is so much to choose from - and therein lies the curse. Here we get the blessing: by covering the psyche and not the psychology we end up with a feast not a blow-out. Shot in a series of characters we find the different persona that Dylan foisted on the eager and not so eager public played out by a host of different actors and actresses that capture the zeitgeist near perfectly.
It deserves awards and accolades. Quite simply one of the best music biography I have ever seen; and if you argue that it isn't a biography then you miss the point entirely - a beautiful, complex, and impish tribute to the man who cannot be pinned down.
And why my title: well, apart from the obvious multi-faceted, you can only really successfully peel a pomegranate one way. Otherwise you end up with a sticky mess and broken seeds. But I'm not telling you how....
Just left to quote Ramblin' Jack Elliot on the album "A Nod To Bob":
Happy (?th) Birthday, Bob.