He may not be there as a character, but Dylan's spirit permeates Todd Haynes' anti-biography

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2008)

Ray Charles? No problem at all. Johnny Cash? Ditto. Bob Dylan? Don't think so. For all his brilliance and deep influence on 20th-century culture, Dylan is so elusive and enigmatic an icon no one has ever tried to make a film about his life. Even Martin Scorsese, who delivered the ultimate tribute, the beautiful documentary No Direction Home, was wise enough to focus on what inspired Dylan rather than the man himself. So why would the great musician sanction Todd Haynes' experimental take on his life? The answer's very simple: he ain't really there.
The key to understanding I'm Not There is in the opening credits, where a caption declares the film is "based on the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". By having six protagonists, all of whom embody an aspect of the singer without actually being named after him, Haynes can cover whatever aspect of Dylan's persona he pleases without upsetting anyone. After all, the subject isn't even there.
So who is there? Well, there's a young African-American boy named Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) who travels around the South of the USA and is influenced by the people he runs into; there's Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), a 22-year old folk artist who is embracing early successes; Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), an actor playing Rollins on screen who is watching his marriage fall apart; Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), who represents the so-called "sell-out" period in which Robert Zimmerman went commercial; Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), an outlaw living in an elegiac landscape and about to witness the end of his era; and the mysterious Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), who is shown as he gets questioned at a trial and throws out the occasional piece of philosophy, speaking lines such as "I accept chaos. I don't know whether it accepts me.".
Six different incarnations: they're all Dylan, and yet they aren't, which is probably the point. When an artist is that complex, the best thing to do is rejecting all thoughts of conventional storytelling: with no trace of chronology or even coherence between the different sections (minus the Bale-Ledger connection), Haynes' peculiar picture is more about mood, music and images than a traditional story. Fans of Sam Peckinpah, in particular, are likely to adore the Gere chapter, which explicitly references the Dylan-scored Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (coincidentally, Peckinpah's Billy, Kris Kristofferson, is the narrator in this film). "Knocking on Heaven's Door", however, is not included.
With all the focus on style, one might think the cast if of secondary importance. That couldn't be further from the truth: from Franklin's passionate "rookie" to Whishaw's unsettling oddball, all six "Dylans" contribute to conveying the brilliant poet's secretive charisma. Most effective of all is Blanchett: not only is the physical resemblance faultless; her androgynous performance captures Dylan's contradictory charm better than all her co-stars put together, which is why she won the Best Actress award (or should it have been Actor?) in Venice, collected a Golden Globe and will, hopefully, get another Oscar, after her stunning effort in The Aviator.
Bottom line: the movie is very good-looking, wonderfully scored and boasts incredibly strong acting. But is it for everyone? Not really. Those who aren't particularly familiar with Dylan's work will struggle to understand what all the fuss is about, but if they hold on until the end they might be able to appreciate Haynes' creation: a free-wheeling, strangely gripping portrait of a genius. Despite the fact that he isn't actually in it.