Scattered, ambitious, and too over the top

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2007)

Todd Haynes' directed this biopic with a twist about musician Bob Dylan. It stars Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Julianne Moore, Christian Bale, Michelle Williams, and lots more.
If you're expecting that this will NOT be your normal musician's flick, you're wrong. This might not be Ray or Walk the Line but, you can still feel the same vibes from them (they're all about musicians after all). The only difference is that this tries to dig deeper and feel more important than the other two though for me it's a failure.
The cinematography is the best thing about the film; the transitions from black to white to colored to black and white again is near perfect and the editing is commendable If you're a fan of Bob Dylan, you will be delighted to see that there's a vast representation of Dylan in the movie. He is played by six actors in the movie depicting six different parts of Dylan's life. Ironically, none of the character's name is Bob.
Now here comes the criticisms: First, the movie is so dragging. The pace of the story is so slow that by the first forty minutes of the film , I was ready to dismiss it. Surprisingly, it was just almost 1/3 of the movie since it runs for 2 1/2 hours! Talk about a long movie.
Also, there are so many symbolisms through out the whole movie that you'll get confused what does it mean and what it is for. Funny thing is, the first scene of the movie is already a metaphor of some sort.
Acting wise, the ensemble is satisfactory, surprising because they're all actors who have good resumes. Cate Blanchett's gender-bending performance (Yeah, SHE is also Bob Dylan) is good and her mannerisms were on the spot but one can't help but notice that it is too gimmicky. For me, the stand out is the child actor Marcus Carl Franklin who played it simple yet it's effective.
All in all, I guess that this movie HAS the potential to be not way your typical musical biopic should be. The ideas were convincing, the concept was good, they're trying to make it artistic, I get that, but when you see the results, it was scattered, ambitious, and too over the top.
I appreciated Todd Haynes' effort to go on a different route but sadly, this one didn't work for me.