Hapless homage

Rating: 3/10 (23 November 2007)

Cate Blanchett's and Charlotte Gainsbourg's performances, along with Dylan's actual music, are the only redeeming features (hence one point for each in the rating) of this madwoman's breakfast of a tribute. As a Dylan aficionado, I recognized almost all the material referenced, whether biographical, historical, or musical; but the central conceit of the film, using different actors and multiple pseudonyms for Dylan in his different phases, is as irritating as it is labored. It out-herods Herod, since the re-invention & assumption of guises is well-known to any fan, and therefore redundant; and will be undecipherable to anyone who isn't, and therefore pointless.
Christian Bale, who portrays both the early folk-singing Dylan and the born-again 1979 Dylan, is crushingly awful and miscast, but even more out of place was the ten or eleven-year old black actor who embodies the multitude of fables Dylan wove about himself at the outset of his career.
This vacuous collage seemed twice as long as Martin Scorsese's four-hour documentary treatment of Dylan's career from 1961-1966.