a patchwork of great scenes and some not so great

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2008)

The idea of making different actors play the same character makes me think of psychodrama and also a play I saw many years ago called "Tom Payne" where if I remember correctly each actor was Tom Payne for a certain amount of time. Todd Haynes had a brilliant idea using many actors as Dylan and Cate Blanchett and Marcus Carl Franklin are superb. Almost all films that portray real characters have a problem in finding the right actor, because when they look alike, it is just that, and the other aspects of the personality are different. It is hard making a film about Dylan when most of what we know about his life was already told by Martin Scorseze. But this film creates great moments like when he is Woody Guthrie or when the song is played about Mr. Jones and Dylan(Cate Blanchett) tries to make Jones feel what it is to be a "geek". Significant key moments of his life are shown very effectively and there is only missing his relation to Judaism. The film is so good up to a certain moment that I could not avoid a certain frustration when it finishes and you feel that something is missing. I could not understand the point of the whole Richard Gere Billy The Kid sequence except from what I read after on IMDb, but if you have to be explained what a sequence is about, then something is not right. Never mind, I loved the film.