Intermittenly Fascinating Failure, Dylan Deserves Better

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2007)

Todd Haynes' brilliant idea to explore Bob Dylan's psychic personas through six different actors portraying parallel lives makes sense in light of this artist's evolution from ragamuffin folkie to psyched-out rocker to country crooner to Christian rocker to American music elder troubadour. Alas, despite its vision, the film eventually crumbles due to its length, artistic pretentiousness, and emptiness, although some of its acting and cinematography save it from being a complete failure.
Cate Blanchett is easily the best actor of the group giving a stellar performance as the mid-60s Dylan - the artist as a young pop star, cynical, dissolute, and tripped-out, living in a Fellini's "8 & 1/2" reality (Haynes even uses Nino Rota's score at one point). Blanchett brings out the conflict between artist and public into plain view as an open wound but this pathos is not further explored other than in that passage. Young Marcus Carl Franklin provides another excellent performance as Dylan incarnated as a runaway black boy hopping trains with its guitar emulating his hero Woody Guthrie. The other four Dylans do not add much: Christian Bale is the earnest protest folkie who becomes a Christian preacher; Heath Ledger is the failed husband, womanizing movie star; Ben Whishaw is a motormouth pseudo French poet Rimbaud; Richard Gere is an aging Billy the Kid living in a parallel universe's Wild West. Any Dylan mythologist or even casual fana who listen to his music and know a thing or two about Dylan are aware that he started as a folkie, converted to Christianity at one point, had women, and admired two 19th century icons: rebellious teen French poet Rimbaud and American West teen outlaw Billy the Kid, so there are no revelations here. To make matters worst, the four actors'performances are rather perfunctory.
There are brilliant scenes effortlessly blending American West wilderness, Fellinesque surrealism, and New York street grittiness, but eventually they become tedious, gimmicky, as the film does not have anything to say other than rehash well known Dylan tales through a loopy, pseudo stream of consciousness narrative. It never provides the viewer with a fresh vision or insight of Dylan as a creative soul. Its emptiness becomes evident and its gimmickry cannot save it. Surely Dylan deserves better.