'I'm Not There' (2007) | 30 Best Music Biopics of All Time | Rolling Stone 30 Best Music Biopics of All Time 30 Best Music Biopics of All Time From 18th-century composers to hip-hop legends, the greatest musician stories to ever grace big and small screens All Stories 1. 'I'm Not There' (2007) How do you possibly try to encapsulate the life of Bob Dylan — one of the rock era's greatest shape-shifters — in a single film? If you're Carol director Todd Haynes, by splitting that life into different eras and influences, casting everyone from Cate Blanchett to Richard Gere to Heath Ledger to Christian Bale to portray separate shards in Dylan's rich, confounding mosaic. I'm Not There is both thrilling and inquisitive, staying away from chronology and straight biography to grasp, in a larger sense, how Dylan remade the world while constantly reinventing himself over the years.

On one level, the film is merely a joyride through cinematic styles — aping the look and feel of Godard, A Hard Day's Night, 8 1/2 and 1970s revisionist Westerns — but, more profoundly, it pays the singer-songwriter the highest compliment by crafting a fractured, often brilliant exploration that's as vibrant as the man it honors. TG I'm Not There [Original Soundtrack] - Bob Dylan | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic I'm Not There [Original Soundtrack] AllMusic Rating google+ AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine For his impressionistic 2007 Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes hired an army of six actors to portray the singer/songwriter, each thespian representing a different phase or public persona of Dylan 's career. The accompanying double-disc soundtrack -- not all of its 34 songs are used in the film -- employs a similar conceit, as Haynes and his music supervisors, Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar, rounded up rockers and folksingers of all stripes to reinterpret and re-create portions of Dylan 's immense catalog.

Taken as a whole, neither the singers nor the selections are too conventional, as the album alternates between standards and obscurities, old cohorts and new blood, faithful renditions and original interpretations, never tipping too far in either direction or staying in one place too long. Despite that shifting mood, I'm Not There gels as an album, partially because a good portion of the soundtrack is recorded with one of two different house bands: the dusty, cinematic Arizona outfit Calexico and the Million Dollar Bashers , a supergroup assembled for this gig featuring guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth , Tom Verlaine , Dylan 's regular bassist Tony Garnier , Wilco guitarist Nels Cline , guitarist Smokey Hormel , and organist John Medeski . Haynes also used a similar house band on his previous rock & roll film, the glam rock fantasia Velvet Goldmine and, as a soundtrack, I'm Not There is equally as good, if not quite as risky or flashy as that 1998 gem.

That's partly due to the inspiration, of course: on Velvet Goldmine he got to play with the history of a lot of groups, all known for their extravagant flamboyance, but here he only has one artist, but if any musician has a history as rich as a battalion of bands, it's Bob Dylan . Haynes , Poster , Dunbar and crew concentrate heavily on the '60s -- the film, after all, is grounded in the '60s, pulling in elements of Dylan 's life in the '70s and beyond, including his born-again Christianity and Rolling Thunder outlaw stance, but never quite straying from that foundation -- and the soundtrack touches upon all of Bob 's '60s incarnations, including the folk troubadour, thin wild mercury music, the ragged Americana of The Basement Tapes , and the reflective country-folk of John Wesley Harding .

Familiar sounds may be here, but not necessarily familiar songs -- Haynes , Poster and Dunbar deliberately sidestep standards like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and "Like a Rolling Stone," choosing instead to build this soundtrack around songs that weren't widely released during the '60s, later to surface on The Basement Tapes , Biograph , The Bootleg Series , during the film of No Direction Home, or, in the case of the heavily bootlegged title song, released here for the first time. Some could carp that this doesn't quite make for an accurate picture of Bob -- it ever so slightly continually circles back to the stark, spooky melancholy of Dylan and the Band 's "I'm Not There," which ends the album -- but it's not inaccurate, either. Rather, it's an interpretation of Dylan 's music, emphasizing certain elements and blurring others to paint a portrait where the traditional bleeds into the contemporary and vice versa.

Any Dylanologist could spend hours deconstructing the soundtrack to I'm Not There -- what is selected and why, why certain songs are reinterpreted while others are left alone -- but that's a side benefit to an album that should be enjoyed first as simply an absorbing, entertaining listen. Poster and Dunbar have paired performers with the songs almost perfectly, alternating between subtle surprises and sure picks. No other band could duplicate the haunted quality of Dylan 's "I'm Not There," but Sonic Youth is the ideal match, as they give the song a hazy beauty and a warmth lacking in the original. Sonic Youth 's masterful reading is less of a surprise than how Roger McGuinn and Willie Nelson effortlessly blend in with Calexico on "One More Cup of Coffee" and "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)," respectively, giving these songs arrangements that expand on the originals, just like how Ramblin' Jack Elliott 's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" takes the Highway 61 Revisited standard and stripes it down to its essence. John Doe gives "I Dreamed I Saw St.

Augustine" a subdued, soulful passion that contrasts with both Sufjan Stevens ' twee-ed-up "Ring Them Bells" and Mark Lanegan 's gothic "The Man in the Long Black Coat," yet all speak vividly to the spiritual undercurrents in these songs. Despite their gentle version of "Just Like a Woman" with Charlotte Gainsbourg , Calexico 's cuts come the closest to reinventing the song, particularly on an excellent "Dark Eyes" with Iron & Wine and a good, weary "Goin' to Acapulco" sung by Jim James of My Morning Jacket . Mason Jennings is responsible for good, straight-ahead versions of the earliest folk songs ("The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," "The Times They Are a Changin'"), acquitting himself well, while Once stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova do a joyous "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere." All this soft, dreamy folky material helps the harder cuts here -- including Cat Power 's bluesy "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" -- leap out all the more.

Usually, this is the province of the Million Dollar Bashers , who when fronted by Stephen Malkmus on "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Maggie's Farm" manage to re-create the snide, hipster spirit of 1965 Dylan . They pull off the same trick with Karen O on a rollicking and faithful "Highway 61 Revisited," while Tom Verlaine steps out to the front for a dark, epic "Cold Irons Bound," but this house band isn't the only band that rocks hard, either: the Hold Steady blow through "Can You Please Crawl out Your Window?" and the Black Keys have an heavy, ominous "Wicked Messenger" (not all that dissimilar to the Faces ' version, but decidedly less fun).

But no band truly gets to speak to the two extremes of Dylan 's work (at least as pictured here) as Yo La Tengo , who have a delicate, beautiful "Fourth Time Around" and positively nail the wild, careening sound of 1965 on "I Wanna be Your Lover." They, alone among any of the artists here, get the opportunity to do these two sides of Dylan , but as I'm Not There definitively proves, there were not just two or even ten sides to Dylan : he contains multitudes. That much is evident on his own recordings, which still have power, but sometimes it takes a fresh perspective to hear what's already there, and the soundtrack to I'm Not There provides that perspective in way few other albums do. Track Listing - Disc 1 Bob Dylan as a psychological pastiche: I’m Not There - World Socialist Web Site World Socialist Web Site Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Bob Dylan as a psychological pastiche: I’m Not There By James Brewer 28 December 2007 I’m Not There, for better or worse, is a film not so much about singer-songwriter Bob Dylan as about the idea of Bob Dylan.

More precisely, it is about several different such ideas. It was directed and co-written by Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven). Six actors play six characters, each with a different name, who represent different facets or incarnations of Dylan. This fragmented approach contains certain possibilities, but it also carries with it certain risks: above all, the elevation of impressions over genuine artistic or historical exploration. When asked about the technique in an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Haynes replied, “Questions about identity are part of all my films ... this idea of Dylan is somebody as a kind of shape-shifter—somebody for whom change is the only constant.” By the time most of his fans discovered him in the mid-1960s through tunes like “Positively Fourth Street” and “Like A Rolling Stone,” which hit the pop charts, Dylan (born 1941) had transformed himself and his music from his origins in the Greenwich Village, New York City-based folk music scene. He had already alienated many of his early admirers by supposedly embracing the commercialism of rock ‘n’ roll over the “purity” of acoustic folk music. The 1967 documentary directed by D.A.

Pennebaker, Don’t Look Back, attempted to capture that period, as did the more recent No Direction Home, by Martin Scorsese. Both films focused on Dylan at the height of his popularity, generally recognized to have ended with his motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966. I’m Not There attempts to broaden the understanding of Dylan’s career by both extending the time period and taking a psychological rather than a chronological approach, with distinctly mixed results. Again, Haynes from the “Fresh Air” interview: “The funny thing about Dylan is that he completely enters each of these phases, these psychic modes that he explores ... I think of him as a consummate performer who lives and dies in the moment he is singing ... just in that same way when it’s over its dead. It’s utterly finished and he moves on ... it’s utterly an American process.” Haynes may be on to something, about Americans’ ‘changeability,’ but, unhappily, the idea is never pursued in any depth. Woody In one of the filmmaker’s quirkier choices, a young black television actor, Marcus Carl Franklin, plays a character presented as a youthful Dylan.

An 11-year-old runaway with a proclivity for hopping freight trains, which evokes the Depression era, he goes by the name ‘Woody.’ Suggested here is the young Bob Zimmerman (Dylan’s real name) before he arrives on the folk scene in New York City. Early in his life, Dylan became infatuated with the music and lifestyle of the folk troubadour, Woody Guthrie. Dylan was so influenced by Guthrie that he adopted the latter’s manner of speech and tried to emulate his singing. The younger singer became known for fabricating details of his early life modeled after Guthrie’s romantic hobo lifestyle. Robbie Robbie Clark is Dylan’s public/private psyche played by Heath Ledger. A film actor, Robbie’s persona is informed and shaped by the rumors that circulated in the press about Dylan’s private life. Always surrounded by adoring fans, Robbie becomes increasingly self-centered. He begins a relationship with and eventually marries a painter named Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Her character is loosely based on Sara Lownds, Dylan’s first wife and their relationship is personified in the film’s title, I’m Not There. Robbie is constantly ‘elsewhere’ and never faithful.

The film’s title comes from a little-known Dylan song off the 1966-67 home recording sessions known as the “Basement Tapes.” The song has only been available previously in various bootlegs that were circulated over the years. It is an otherwise unremarkable number about Dylan’s relationship with Lownds. The scenes of the Robbie-Claire relationship attempt to provide some historical orientation through the use of television news coverage of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Claire is very attentive. We don’t know about Robbie. As the film unfolds, he becomes increasingly unpleasant to those close to him. Their divorce is bitter though neither stops caring for the other. This segment is given disproportionate weight. Although it may not have been intentional, this chronicle becomes the center of the film. Haynes claims not to have produced a biographical work in the traditional sense, but Robbie’s story (Dylan’s personal life) tends to fill the vacuum created by the lack of historical or social insight. Jack Perhaps the least interesting of the six personae is Jack Rollins, played by Christian Bale. He represents the protest singer and later the born-again Christian.

In deconstructing the idea of Dylan, Haynes arbitrarily isolates the committed proselytizer, whether of protest politics or religion, from the cynical iconoclast. The scenes of Dylan singing in the film are mostly of Jack. There is a certain flatness here. He sings “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” at a civil rights rally, but it just doesn’t have the feeling of the original. There is a sense that Jack is just going through the motions. Several characters are interviewed about Jack, including Alice Fabian, played by Julianne Moore. She suggests a mature Joan Baez as interviewed in Scorsese’s No Direction Home. Despite Moore’s convincing portrayal of Baez, recreating the Scorsese footage in this manner is an ambiguous undertaking, which serves to remove the narrative one step farther from reality and also seeks to present the interview as authoritative background. Jude Surprisingly, the most recognizable of the Dylan surrogates is Jude Quinn, played by Cate Blanchett. This is the iconoclastic, electrified and dandified Dylan as seen in Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back.

The Jude scenes are filmed in black and white, intended to recreate the feel of that film’s footage. In regard to his choice of a woman to play one of his Dylans, Haynes told the Boston Globe that he wanted to find a method of getting at the “shock” of the electric Dylan, “the newness” of it. “It’s why I wanted to cast a woman to play him in 1966, because at that moment, physically, the music he was producing, is one of the most famous Dylans. But the shock value of that, the strangeness of it, the weirdness of that body and [those] hand gestures and hair and the way he talked, is something that we’ve lost.” Quinn/Blanchett/Dylan walks onto the stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with a backup band, and they proceed to blast the audience with machine guns before breaking into a loud electric version of “Maggie’s Farm.” Someone meant to suggest folksinger Pete Seeger is so upset by the music that he attempts to cut the power cables with a fire axe and is wrestled to the ground by Dylan’s manager. In subsequent appearances, the booing continues.

During a London concert before performing “Like a Rolling Stone,” an audience member shouts, “Judas!” Dylan replies, “I don’t believe you,” and tells the band to “play it f—-ing loud.” Haynes derives the character’s name from this episode. Haynes’ presentation is uncritical of popular mythology to the point of slavishness. Dylan breaking of his ties with the “folk scene” was contradictory, to say the least. On the one hand, the atmosphere that the “purists” such as Seeger and Alan Lomax sought to preserve was artistically stultifying. Some of Dylan’s most evocative material was produced in this period. On the other hand, in throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e., turning his back entirely on social life, including the Vietnam War, Dylan ultimately marginalized himself. Along with his newfound fame came the inevitable trappings—the self-indulgent, abandoned lifestyle of a super star. The “Jude” phase ends with Dylan’s infamous motorcycle accident. Jude rides ominously off-screen and we hear the sound of a crash, then silence. Billy These scenes are the film’s most bizarre.

Richard Gere plays Billy [the Kid] as he might have been had he survived to middle age. He is known as Mr. B. in his rural pioneer town of Halloween, where everyone is in costume. Billy represents the older Dylan. Time has changed and his youthful ideals have been defeated and been made irrelevant by corporate power. There is no apparent logic to the random, Felliniesque symbolism in these scenes, just an overarching sense of doom. This theme is suggested by Dylan’s minor film role in a 1973 Western directed by Sam Peckinpah, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It speaks to Dylan’s (and perhaps Haynes’) romanticized vision of America. Arthur Scenes of Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th-century French poet, played by Ben Whishaw, are scattered randomly throughout the film. “Arthur” sits behind a table as though being interviewed, declaring himself to be against beauty and nature. It is intentionally unclear whether the character portrays Rimbaud or Dylan.

Of his film as a whole, Haynes says, “It’s an unusual movie, there’s no question about it, but you have to kind of go with it, you can’t fight it and worry about understanding every single reference in the film. And I think that’s true for any great Dylan song.” Haynes is not unintelligent and I’m Not There is carefully crafted. But his uncritical attitude toward Dylan’s evolution and body of work informs, or disinforms, if you will, the production. He wants to have it both ways. I’m Not There is full of references to Dylan’s life and music, but they are not there to help an audience make sense of the singer’s career and times, but merely as part of an experience, like “any great Dylan song.” Dylan’s reinventions of himself are treated by Haynes largely as an internal psychological process.

However, the height of the singer’s influence and some of his sharpest changes took place in the period 1963-68, among the most explosive years in postwar American history, which witnessed three major assassinations and the reshaping of official political life, US imperialism’s plunging into full-scale colonial war in Southeast Asia, uprisings in major American cities and the emergence of a mass protest movement. Might not these phenomena, and the psychic reverberations they set off, have had something to do with Dylan’s evolution? One could make such a study. For example, was it a coincidence that songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “My Back Pages,” which expressed distance from or demoralization with social protest, and heralded a major shift in Dylan’s artistic direction, were written just months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Haynes doesn’t choose to raise many critical questions, much less attempt to answer them. Why did Dylan’s music find such a powerful response? Why did he abandon his social criticism on the eve of the mass anti-Vietnam protests? Did this abandonment have an impact on the depth and substance of his later music?

At its best Dylan’s music expressed a sensitivity that could be poetic, touching and often angry. This is why much of it is still recorded by many different artists. At its worst, the music could be self-indulgent, muddy and tedious. Haynes wants to make something other than a traditional biopic, he wants the spectator “To be thrust into the ’60s and to be thrust into the inside of what that artist was actually doing.” Fair enough, but for that, an ambitious enterprise, a historical frame of reference is vital. To make sense of Dylan’s complex and contradictory career would require a deeper grasp of the processes that were pitching people about, not only Dylan. It has to be said that as the social conflicts grew sharper in the late 1960s, Dylan’s music became tamer and less evocative. Opposition to the existing order is one of the characteristics that he cast off. His music of the late 1960s and early 1970s became more and more religious and self-absorbed. Haynes doesn’t seem to notice. Or else he chooses not to draw attention for his own reasons.

The idea of the multi-psycho-dimensional Bob Dylan is an interesting one, but in the end, it doesn’t succeed in either adequately entertaining or enlightening. We leave the theater, more or less, with the opinions and feelings we had when we entered it—about Dylan’s music, about Dylan the artist, about Dylan the human being. I'M NOT THERE A film review by Craig J. Koban I'M NOT THERE 2007, R, 135 mins. John/Jack: Christian Bale / Jude: Cate Blanchett / Woody: Marcus Carl Franklin / Billy: Richard Gere / Robbie: Heath Ledger / Arthur: Ben Whishaw / Claire: Charlotte Gainsbourg / Alice: Julianne Moore Directed by Todd Haynes / Written by Haynes and Oren Moverman. Watching Todd Haynesï¿½ Iï¿½M NOT THERE is like trying to put together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle for nearly two and a half hours and never once being able to get any of the pieces to fit.

The film is an exasperating and frustrating 135-minute biopic in the way it attempts to demystify and deconstruct one of the 20th Centuryï¿½s most influential recording artists and it never really accomplishes its aims in any real way. I went into Iï¿½M NOT THERE having no real insight into the oftentimes controversial American singer-songwriter, author, musician, and poet and after leaving the theatre Dylan remained an even larger, enigmatic figure. I think that biopics ï¿½ at least the best ones ï¿½ are able to provide some sort of tangible commentary about their personas and are able to probe into their psyches. Thatï¿½s not to say that all of their motivations need to be spelled out methodically on paper for the audience, but at the very least these films need to try to dive into the creative mindsets of the artists and attempt to make some amends for what makes these people tick.

Recent musical biopics ï¿½ like RAY and WALK THE LINE ï¿½ did all of this with varying degrees of success; in Todd Haynesï¿½ case with Iï¿½M NOT THERE, the film is a disappointment and letdown. Thatï¿½s not to say that this is a biopic void of artistic ambition and ingenuity. Far from it. If there is one commendable attribute of Haynesï¿½ effort here is that he is at least trying to deconstruct the musical biopic genre itself and attempts to make his film from a fresh prerogative and style. Instead of getting one actor to play Dylan in a traditional story that chronicles his life story, Haynes instead depicts several different stages of the eclectic musicianï¿½s life and public persona and gets an ensemble cast of actors to portray him with different character names. The stars on board to plays all of the ï¿½Dylansï¿½ range from Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, the late Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, and, yes, Cate Blanchett herself.

In terms of its aesthetic choices, Iï¿½M NOT THERE is, at least on paper, an estimable and unique endeavor. Points should be given to Haynes, at face value, for daring to be different. Unfortunately, the source of the filmï¿½s inspiration and distinctiveness is also its greatest weakness. Instead of all of the respective Dylan vignettes working cohesively together to provide a sobering and thought-provoking look at this important figurehead in folk music, they all are cobbled together so incoherently and in such a chaotic and unfocused manner that you never really gain an appreciation for what the film is trying to say about the man. The film ï¿½ at nearly two and a half hours ï¿½ is a grueling and exhausting endurance test in the way it never makes you emotionally invest in or relate to the underlining material in any meaningful manner. Sure, Dylanï¿½s music permeates the soundtrack here ï¿½ and it is ubiquitously considered watershed work in the annals of pop culture ï¿½ but Iï¿½M NOT THERE does little to embellish, comment on, or understand, his mystique.

Instead, we are giving widely divergent snippets of his life that never coalesce with any symmetry; the fractured nature of the film only leaves people scratching their heads and asking more questions. Youï¿½ll come out admiring Dylan's music, but never appreciating the man behind it. As result, sitting through the film is like sharing coffee with a monosyllabic, grunting, pretentious, and incoherently pontificating artist for an evening. Since Dylan in the film is mostly shown as a monosyllabic, grunting, pretentious, and incoherently pontificating artist, you can see how Iï¿½M NOT THERE could be a straining and maddening chore to watch. As stated, there are several Dylans and Haynes intercuts their stories and films them all with different film stocks and directorial choices. We first are shown Marcus Carl Franklin, a gifted young black child actor, playing the 11-year-old Dylan - who goes by the name of Woody Guthrie - that escapes from a juvenile correction center.

He later hitchhikes onto a train with his guitar labeled ï¿½This Machine Kills Fascists.ï¿½ The great Christian Bale plays Dylan #2 and he goes by the name of Jack Rollins, who essentially is a version of Dylan as a young and ambitious folk singer that imbues his work with a political conscience and soul. Later on, Rollins becomes a born again Christian and a Pastor, mirroring Dylanï¿½s own spiritual changes later in life. Dylan #3 is played by Ben Whishaw - who calls himself the poet Arthur Rimbaud - and he is presented throughout much of the film breaking the cinematic fourth wall as he talks to the audience as he is being interviewed. Dylan #4 is played by the late Heath Ledger as a Hollywood actor named Robbie Clark, who in turn is making a film about Jack Rollins. This Dylan shows the artist during his courtship, marriage, and eventual divorce from Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).

Dylan #5 is the oldest version of the artist as is played by Richard Gere - who is an elder Billy the Kid - that lives in a dreamlike old Wild West town that is at odds with an even older Pat Garrett (played by Bruce Greenwood, whose vocalizations are vaguely like Dylan's, as least as much to label Garrett as a possible Dylan #6). Finally, we have Dylan #7, played most famously by Cate Blanchett - named Jude Quinn - whom is essentially Dylan at his most famous ï¿½ and personally impenetrable ï¿½ version of himself in the 1960ï¿½s. This also marks the highly dubious period during Dylanï¿½s life when he decided to go ï¿½electricï¿½ with his sound, which led to his legion of fans lambasting him as a sell out. Perhaps the most attention-grabbing aspect of Iï¿½M NOT THERE is how adept Haynes is at making each Dylan vignette look and feel different.

The scenes with Guthrie, Clark, and Billy the Kid are all in color; the scenes with Rollins are shot on grainy 16mm stock are framed with mock-documentary footage with people who knew him (Julianne Moore makes a cameo here); the Jude Quinn section is also filmed in black and white with hints of the surreal palette that Fellini used in 8 ï¿½. On a artistic level, Haynes is a practiced film student in the way he channels each vignette into being like several little accomplished looking films in their own respective rights. Yet, however polished Haynes is with crafting these sections, there is no real connective thread that ties everything together to form an interconnected whole, which ultimately is the filmï¿½s tragic undoing. All of the subplots and stories within the larger story seem so incongruent with each other and the editing of the film lacks focused transitions. Iï¿½M NOT THERE has a careless, free wheeling spirit about it that only serves to confuse and confound viewers.

The aimlessness and sense of utter meaninglessness to the filmï¿½s structure makes in impossible to become involved in any of the respective stories, not to mention that it all but eradicates any character development in the film. Iï¿½M NOT THERE utilizes a very avant garde approach to the material, but, in the end, you are left feeling that a more traditional biopic structure still would have been the most satisfying choice. Iï¿½M NOT THERE is a film that is brilliant in inception, but wholeheartedly lousy in implementation. The film is all the more sad to sit through when one considers the great talent involved, some of whom are great in it, some decent, while some being distractions. I found myself responding strongest to Baleï¿½s interpretation (heï¿½s so spot on here that I kind of wished for a whole movie about his version) as I did Ledgerï¿½s interpretation, which is rock solid.

The sections with Whishaw's poet Rimbaud have a tacked-on and rambling incoherence about them, as does the inexplicably miscast Gere as the Dylan-esque Billy the Kid (this section feels like it could have been easily excised from the film altogether). Then, of course, there is Blanchett, who has seen a lot of press ï¿½ and critical accolades - regarding her version of Dylan. She undoubtedly gets his physical mannerisms down pat and she does a modestly good job of mimicking Dylan, but she emerges as a gimmicky distraction throughout Iï¿½M NOT THERE. Any real palpable drama or intrigue is compounded by the fact that we are essentially seeing a woman in reverse-drag. As a result, itï¿½s hard to fully immerse yourself completely in Blanchettï¿½s performance. Imagine, for example, if Brad Pitt playedï¿½sayï¿½Joni Mitchell. See what I mean? Todd Haynes is a great filmmaker; films like SAFE, VELVET GOLDMINE, and the Oscar nominated FAR FROM HEAVEN. The latter mentioned film, like Iï¿½M NOT THERE, tried to radically reinterpret a genre.

Yet, while watching his quasi-Dylan biopic itï¿½s disheartening to see what a muddled, confusing, and messy film it really is. As a piece of experimental filmmaking that tries to be everything but mainstream, Iï¿½M NOT THERE is a work that has novelty, but itï¿½s novelty wears thin extremely fast. Instead of being taking in by it, we are left perplexed and bewildered. Consider the cultural significance of Bob Dylan, who systematically rejuvenated the music world with his focus on so many divergent genres (pop, rock, folk, jazz, country and blues, etc.) alongside breathing a political and philosophical heartbeat into his work. He is clearly deserving of a biopic that does his legacy justice. Iï¿½M NOT THERE is not that film. Lookin for DVD: I'm not there A Movie about Bob Dylan I'm not there A Movie about Bob Dylan A movie to be released on November 21, 2007. I'm not there movie is a movie about the life of Bob Dylan. In short this movie is a biography film. Directed by Todd Haynes, Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and many more.

Bob Dylan is one of the famous American singer-songwriter, an author, musician, a poet and also a disc jockey. A multi-talented man who contributes alot to the musical industry. His music start to recognized year 1960. And at the age of 66 he released an album last August 29, 2006 entitles Modern Times. According to the producer of the film Christine Vachon. I'm Not There movie will tell a story using a non-traditional techniques, like poetic narrative style which utilized Dylan's songwriting. The said film is inspired by Dylan's music and his ability to imagine and re-create himself time and time again. The title of the movie I'm not there is one of the title of the song from his album The Basement Tapes which is not officially released but it became popular not just because its the title of the movie but also the said song is the official soundtrack of the movie. There are seven Bob Dylan's characters in the movie that embody a different aspect if the musician's life and work. CAST: Film Review: “I’m Not There” – Houston Public Media Movie Reviews Film Review: “I’m Not There” (The Weinstein Company.

Opened in Houston Nov. 21. Rated R. 135 minutes. Directed by Todd Haynes.) Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams. Music by Bob Dylan. | Posted on November 20, 2007, 5:00 AM Experimental film from Haynes (Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine), inspired by (and with permission from) the life of folk hero Dylan. Most notable in that six different actors – including a woman (Blanchett) and a young African-American boy (Franklin) – portray the singer/songwriter at various life stages, moods, inspirations, perceptions. Also starring as Dylan: Bale, Gere, Ledger, and Whishaw (the young British actor who was the star of last year’s far-more-intriguing Perfume: the Story of a Murderer). Soundtrack includes original recordings as well as covers.

Dylan-heads will get the numerous references (to the famous Newport and London concerts; Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; the press conference, etc.) and most others will just be scratching their heads, thanks to the lack of narrative or main point. There’s no denying Dylan’s fantastic songbook, though. Perhaps the whole thing would come off better accompanied by the mood-altering substance of your choice, with the soundtrack cranked way up. Now, that’s the 60s. Share Heath Ledger - I’m Not There - - The New York Times The New York Times Movies |In Stetson or Wig, He’s Hard to Pin Down Search Continue reading the main story Photo Heath Ledger is one of six actors portraying incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Hayness Im Not There. Credit Jonathan Wenk/Weinstein Company LONDON THE neighborhood was nothing special, just another anonymous street in North London, and the corrugated-metal front door suggested the entrance to an auto-repair shop or maybe some kind of studio. But it opened into another world: a lush courtyard nestled inside a striking modern house with acres of white walls, exotic works of art and a roof garden, complete with burbling fountain.

Behind the door too was Heath Ledger , the current tenant of the house, making coffee in the glass-walled kitchen and presenting his own deceptive exterior. What you see is a strapping 28-year-old with sleepy eyes, an amused crinkly grin and out-of-control blondish hair, dressed on this particular occasion in a hooded sweatshirt and ripped jeans hanging low to reveal the waistband of a pair of light blue flannel underpants. What you get is a lot less obvious: a serious but hard-to-pin-down actor disguised as a California stoner. (He played one once, in “Lords of Dogtown.” ) Mr. Ledger has resisted typecasting since his first Hollywood film, the perfectly decent teenage-romance comedy “10 Things I Hate About You,” filled him with such foreboding about his possible future as a fluffy heartthrob that he turned down work for a year because all he was being offered were similar parts. Although he has since appeared in light, romantic-hero roles in films like “A Knight’s Tale” and “Casanova,” Mr.

Ledger has also played a sensitive prison guard, a heroin addict spiraling out of control and, in a revelation of a part, a reluctantly gay cowboy in “Brokeback Mountain” : a hodgepodge of characters that are deliberately unlike one another. “I feel like I’m wasting time if I repeat myself,” he explained. Nor is he ever happy with his performance, exactly. “I can’t say I was proud of my work,” Mr. Ledger declared of his latest role, in “I’m Not There” (Nov. 21), Todd Haynes ’s strange, audacious new film, which attempts to get to the heart of Bob Dylan by dancing around him. “I feel the same way about everything I do. The day I say, ‘It’s good’ is the day I should start doing something else.” Continue reading the main story In a film that uses multiple actors to portray multiple aspects of Dylan, Mr. Ledger plays Dylan the media superstar, a charismatic, swaggering figure who parties with celebrities, wears look-at-me-but-leave-me-alone sunglasses and watches his personal life collapse under the pressures of his public persona. Yes, but what does the film mean? Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr.

Ledger laughed and compared “I’m Not There” to a Rubik’s Cube, insoluble by mere mortals. “I think it’s one of those films that you have to kind of accept and invite instead of trying to challenge and solve,” he said. “Bob Dylan himself defies description, and I think Todd was aiming to represent him. He was not trying to sum him up or define him.” In a telephone interview from Berlin, where he was promoting “I’m Not There,” Mr. Haynes said that Mr. Ledger’s character was inspired by “photographs of Dylan taken in the mid-’60s when he was hanging out in New York locations with dark-rimmed eyeglasses and shooting pool or reading the newspapers in the classic Godardian striped crew-necked shirt.” James Dean too. “Dylan was completely inspired by James Dean, and Heath has a little bit of James Dean in him, even physically, a kind of precocious seriousness,” Mr. Haynes went on.

“As adult actors seem more and more infantile and refusing to grow up, middle-aged guys with their baseball caps, Heath is one of those young people who have a real intuition, a maturity beyond their years.” Making the role all the more complicated was that Mr. Ledger’s character is meant, in a way, to be a Dylan twice removed. In the movie Mr. Ledger is not playing Dylan per se, but an actor famous, in the fictional world of “I’m Not There,” for portraying Dylan in his early years as a singer-songwriter of protest music. But because Christian Bale, the actor who plays this early Dylan in the film, was scheduled to film his scenes after Mr. Ledger, Mr. Ledger said he was faced with “playing an actor portraying Christian portraying a Dylanesque character, and not being sure what Christian was going to do.” Or, to put it another way, “Who was I playing when I was acting?” It all tied him in knots. “I stressed out a little too much,” Mr. Ledger said. He tends to do that. He is here in London filming the latest episode of the “Batman” franchise, “The Dark Knight.” (Mr.

Bale, as it happens, plays Batman; Mr. Ledger plays the Joker.) It is a physically and mentally draining role — his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully — and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much. Photo Heath Ledger, right, and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Credit Kimberly French/Focus Features “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Even as he spoke, Mr. Ledger was hard-pressed to keep still. He got up and poured more coffee. He stepped outside into the courtyard and smoked a cigarette. He shook his hair out from under its hood, put a rubber band around it, took out the rubber band, put on a hat, took off the hat, put the hood back up.

He went outside and had another cigarette. Polite and charming, he nonetheless gave off the sense that the last thing he wanted to do was delve deep into himself for public consumption. “It can be a little distressing to have to overintellectualize yourself,” is how he put it, a little apologetically. Conducting a tour of the house, which he is renting for a few months, he made wry remarks about the art. One painting depicts a crowd of creatures who appear to be in hell, but who seem determined to extract as much sexual pleasure as they can from their eternity of free time; Mr. Ledger has turned another one around and hung it upside down, to no apparent ill advantage. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy An open bag with clothes spilling out lay on the floor of the master bedroom. “I’m kind of addicted to moving,” Mr. Ledger said, perhaps on account of having had to shuttle back and forth after his parents’ divorce, when he was 11.

He carries his interests around with him, and his kitchen table was awash in objects: a chess set, assorted books, various empty glasses, items of clothing. Here too was his Joker diary, which he began compiling four months before filming began. It is filled with images and thoughts helpful to the Joker back story, like a list of things the Joker would find funny. (AIDS is one of them.) Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he had been caught trying to get extra credit in school. “He’s very disciplined and takes it very seriously,” said Marc Forster, who directed Mr. Ledger in “Monster’s Ball,” in which he played a troubled prison guard. Mr. Ledger came to the part at the last minute, but caught on quickly. “Heath at the time was something like 22, and I thought: ‘He’s incredible. He’s so smart and so intuitive and so observant, and he really understood the part and the character.’” Also on the table is a winsome photograph of Mr. Ledger’s daughter, Matilda, now a toddler. (Mr.

Ledger met Matilda’s mother, the actress Michelle Williams, while filming “Brokeback Mountain” and fell into a very public whirlwind romance and then into loved-up domestication in Brooklyn; they both appear together in “I’m Not There” but have recently separated. He is leery of talking about their relationship, but heaps spontaneous praise on Ms. Williams’s performance.) Mr. Ledger now lives in Manhattan, and, when he’s home, likes to play chess with the chess sharks who hang out in Washington Square Park; sometimes he beats them. But mostly he likes to hang out with Matilda— “it’s kind of like your whole body has a lump in its throat,” he said, of having to be away — and goes back as often as he can to see her. Mr. Ledger was born in Perth, Australia, a place so far away, he said, that “sometimes when you’re there, it feels like the earth really is flat, and you’re sitting right on the edge.” He acted in some Australian soap operas before moving to Hollywood in pursuit of a girlfriend.

(The relationship did not last.) He was cast in “10 Things” opposite Julia Stiles, starred in a brief-lived television series and began appearing in movies like “A Knight’s Tale,” playing a swashbuckling medieval lover-jouster. “I was more concerned with having a good time than with focusing on work,” he said. But suddenly he realized that he cared. “I started to look at the work and think, ‘Oh, God, maybe I should be taking this seriously, because people are going to see this,’” he said. “All I saw were mistakes — a lack of care, lack of attention to detail.” Among other things, he began working with Gerry Grennell, his dialect coach, who has seen him through a dizzying spectrum of dialects and intonations. (“It’s rare that there’s a role that requires an Australian accent,” Mr. Ledger said.) Among his next projects are a film directed by Terry Gilliam, and another by Terrence Malick. Mr. Ledger is learning to play the piano and to sing. He also directs music videos, has a small independent record label called Masses Music in Los Angeles and is planning to direct a film at the end of next year.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story One of the things that struck him most about the Dylan who emerges in “I’m Not There,” he said, was Dylan’s continual effort to resist easy categorization and his willingness to “recreate himself and not conform to people’s ambitions to put him in a box.” That is how Mr. Ledger feels too, and he likes to keep an element of surprise, for the world at large and for himself. “Some people find their shtick,” he said. “I’ve never figured out who ‘Heath Ledger’ is on film: ‘This is what you expect when you hire me, and it will be recognizable.’” He continued: “People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and can describe you. That’s fine. But there are many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note.” A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: In Stetson or Wig, He’s Hard to Pin Down. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Which famous singer songwriter was the inspiration for the 2007 movie I'm Not There?
Answer: Bob Dylan