This Machine Kills Fascists

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2008)

Maudlin, Gothic, hysterical, thrilled to be here, and not really here at all, this is my favorite movie of 2007. This is art on fire, consuming itself, burning off its veneer of postmodern chagrin to pour heat on a shivering body politic. Who needs sense, though this movie makes more sense than any ten Will Smith vehicles. What means truth, though this movie's got more truth than any fifty Joel Schumacher projects. Genius actors Blanchett and Cross, playing genius poets Dylan and Ginsberg, calling up to a crucified Jesus to "do your early stuff" or else "you could get yourself killed"...well, what can be said about it? It transcends commentary, genre, venue, medium, taste. This movie is rock and roll. Play it loud.
Beyond the strictures of biography, approbation, paean, odyssey, it just keeps giving. Charlotte Gainsbourg: thank you. Richie Havens: thank you. This is what Bale oughtta be doing, not retread superheroes but real live human beings; this is what Gere can do, not just another PRETTY WOMAN clone but a real character in a real original. Cate Blanchett once again flawlessly executes what seemingly no one else in the world could be expected to pull off. Bruce Greenwood is always good, but how often is he great? Marcus Carl Franklin is better than any little kid has a right to be. Ben Whishaw is sharp and stark in the limited arena he is allowed. And how odd is it now to watch the currently dead Heath Ledger playing a movie star older than he ever got, full of regret, choked by loss, embittered by the success that gave and took everything he had?
Todd Haynes scares me. He's so often so painfully good - SUPERSTAR, SAFE, I'M NOT THERE - that he makes it possible to contemplate honest mistakes like POISON and FAR FROM HEAVEN with feelings of mellow condescension and still realize you're looking at a big, fat king of the road. This guy can do anything. I want to see everything he does no matter how bad or good because this, my friends, is a man with something to say and saying it in as many voices as he cares to articulate. He shouts, he whispers, he hisses in your ear, he breaks bottles with his teeth and spits splinters of glass into your eyes. I am glad to be awake today, because I managed not to sleep through this delirious spectacle.
There's a sequence in I'M NOT THERE that takes place in Stockton, California, when Dylan loses his mind and finds religion in the sticks. Well, you can take it from me and anyone else who ever lived there with his eyes open that Stockton is exactly the right place for a brilliant light to go out for awhile. Leave it to Haynes to find such a place, and to use it for all (more than?) it's worth.