Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. is a fascinating non-conventional look at Bob Dylan

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2008)

As a filmmaker, Todd Haynes certainly is an acquired taste. From the bootlegged doll movie bio of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to the '50s-style Far From Heaven, Haynes makes movies that conventional-watching audiences must find puzzling. And so it is with his portrait of Bob Dylan in his various phases of his life and music with countless actors playing him using different names each time. Of them, Cate Blanchett probably plays the most familiar one during Dylan's "electric" period when audiences were booing him for changing his style from pure folk to rock and admirers like poet Allen Ginsberg (a spot-on performance by David Cross) hung around. Richard Gere represents the more fictional aspect of him during the time he played in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and seemed to channel the period as through a revisionist western. And then there's Heath Ledger playing him during the singer's domestic life and his arguments with his wife and her female friend about women's lib. Nothing really connects here until the climax at the end and when it's all over, you'll either really be relieved at such and want to go on to something else or want to watch it all over again and explore other things Dylan. I'm Not There. is certainly a unique way of looking at the life and times of one of the most important musical figures of the last century.