Ambitious film that fails

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2008)

This is a fictionalized biography based on the life of Bob Dylan. Since Dylan has presented so many faces to the world, the premise of splitting Dylan into six different personas each performed by a different actor is a clever concept. But the presentation is so jumbled and pretentious that it became increasingly more of a chore for me to finish watching this.
I have long appreciated Dylan's music and his way with words and, after having seen this film, I think I should just leave it at that. If you do not know much about Dylan the person, then I think this film will confuse you and leave you cold; if you do have some knowledge of Dylan's life, then I think this film will disappoint you. For example, if you have seen Scorsese's "No Direction Home," you will remember the eloquent interview with Joan Baez there; here we have Julianne Moore standing in for Baez and the interviews with her have none of the emotional power that the real woman conveys. The real Baez comes across as genuine, intelligent, and insightful; Moore comes across as ersatz and shallow. So many times I just wanted to see the real people and not these actors.
In scenes showing the aggressiveness of the interviewers that plagued Dylan, director Haynes totally rips off similar scenes from Fellini's "8 1/2." He continues with a Fellini imitation in some of the latter scenes and those scenes I found pretentious and meaningless. Haynes is no Fellini.
We get a good sampling of Dylan's music, some of it sung by Dylan, but too much of it not.
After watching this I pulled out some Dylan recordings and listened to them. What a relief to tap into the real thing without being distracted by this movie.