View image Todd on Bob: Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), as one incarnation -- a name-dropping bluesman in 1959 (with tales of Blind Willie McTell and Gorgeous George) who seems to think he's still in the Great Depression. Others include Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), Jack Rawlins/Pastor John (Christian Bale) and "Billy" McCarty (Richard Gere).
"I was born a poor black child..."
-- Steve Martin, "The Jerk"
"God, I'm glad I'm not me."
-- Bob Dylan, on reading an article about himself in 1965
(quoted in the press kit for Todd Haynes' movie, originally titled "I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan")
Folk-turned-electric singer/songwriter Jude Quinn (looking for all the world like Bob Dylan circa 1965 and played by Cate Blanchett) is riding in a big black limousine when, unaccountably, Allen Ginsburg (David Cross) appears on a golf cart in the rear window, smiling and waving with his frizzy hair blowin' in the wind. Ginsburg pulls up alongside the limo, Quinn rolls down the window, and they travel along parallel trajectories (past a cemetary) while having a brief exchange about an interview Ginsburg had done with a reporter in which the Beat poet was asked about Quinn's musical motives as if all Voices of Their Generation were pretty much one and the same. "They asked you that?!?" Quinn laughs.
View image Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw) in "I'm Not There" in "Don't Look Back" in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in black and white.
That's a little taste of what it's like to watch Haynes' "I'm Not There," which is not only a kaleidoscopic view of events in the life, music and myth of Bob Dylan, but a critical deconstruction and synthesis of Dylan's various media representations -- from D.A. Pennebaker's legendary "Don't Look Back" to Dylan's own "Reynaldo and Clara" to Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan." In some ways, it's the natural companion to "Don't Look Back" (actually re-enacting some scenes and interviews from that documentary in a new context), the movie Dylan probably wanted "Reynaldo and Clara" to be, and in other ways the movie Haynes wanted "Velvet Goldmine" to be. It actually goes back inside these films (Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" and "Petulia," Godard's "Masculin-Feminin," Fellini's "8 1/2" and others, too) -- and the old stories, the album covers, the liner notes, the newspaper and magazine clippings -- and recapitulates and reinterprets them in new contexts. I was thrilled by it, moved, dazzled, entranced. I love this movie.
The earlier film was about the glam era, freely mixing bits and pieces of fact and lore from the lives of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Brian Ferry and others (don't forget Oscar Wilde, who is deposited on earth by a UFO), and that's the kind of thing Haynes is up to here -- mostly with Dylan, but also with "real" and fictional characters around him. Some are identified by their familiar names (like John, Paul, George, and Ringo), some are thinly disguised (or undisguised) stand-ins. And this time he has the music rights, too. Just about the only thing missing is Donovan.
Do you have to know about, or have lived through, the life and legend of Dylan to "get" this film? I don't know. I don't think so, but you'll certainly understand it on more levels if you've seen the Pennebaker, Dylan & Sam Shepard, Scorsese, Peckinpah, Godard, Lester, Fellini, et al. movies mentioned above. And if you know at least some of the music, and something about the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene and the war in Vietnam and the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in protest and Joan Baez (and "Diamonds and Rust") and Sara and Swinging London and the Beats and Albert Goldman and The Hawks (and The Band) and The Basement Tapes and the Rolling Thunder Revue and "Tarantula" and Columbia Records and the motorcycle accident and the "electric" debut at the Newport Folk Festival and the so-called "Royal Albert Hall" concert in 1966 ("Judas!" "I don't believe you...") which actually took place at Manchester's Free Trade Hall (just another part of the legend) and Elvis Presley movies and James Dean movies Marlon Brando movies and Montgomery Clift movies... and so on.
I was a senior in high school when "Blood on the Tracks" came out and utterly changed my life (not the first time Dylan would do that for me), so although most of '60s Dylan predated my awareness of his actual records (we sang "Blowin' in the Wind" in my fourth grade homeroom, with Miss Kwinsland on ukelele, but I didn't know it was a Dylan song; we sang Woody Guthrie tunes, too), I absorbed a lot of this stuff simply by being a young American with an interest in politics and art and pop culture. But do you have to be familiar with all of this in order to appreciate "I'm Not There"? I don't think so. (But consider this: Bruce Greenwood plays Quinn's BBC interviewer/adversary, Mr. Jones, and Pat Garrett.)
A Dylanophile friend was asked if he was in "Dylan heaven" after the film. He thought for a moment and then said, "Yeah. I guess I am." I don't know about that. But I'm at least knockin' on heaven's door.
That's all I'll say for now, because I'm salivating over the prospect of seeing and writing about this movie in more detail later....
Oh, just one other thing. I've talked to five or six people who, unprovoked, described exactly the same response to different moments in the movie. But they all involved having the experience of consciously thinking: "I am in love with Cate Blanchett."
Loved, loved, loved this film. The only segment that didn't work for me was the Richard Gere/Billy The Kid material, but that might have something to do with not being very familiar with that period in Dylan's career.
I'm not sure if this is a better film than No Country For Old Men (I'll have to rewatch both with a clearer head), but I do know I have more affection for it.
I'm looking forward to I'm Not There. I'm not a Bob Dylan fanatic, but I'm familiar enough with his music and his history and the period of his ascent that I know not only what this movie is about but what it is (intuivetly, of course.)
I'll take this opportunity to state that despite its amazing production design, I don't have much love for Velvet Goldmine. I think that film should have just been titled "Absolutely Transparent Bowie." Or-- I think "Velvet Goldmine" was partly a very shallow David Bowie psuedo-biopic and it failed to represent the breathe of Bowie's genius. Sure, the argument could be made that Velvet Goldmine is really about the Glam Rock era and not about Bowie, but I think Velvet Goldmine is equally about Bowie and Glam Rock and Haynes only did justice to the portrayal of Glam Rock.
I'll just quote this bit of trivia from imdb's Trivia page for Velvet Goldmine:
"The film was originally supposed to feature some of David Bowie's music, hence the title. However, when Bowie learned that the script for the film was partially based on the unauthorized biographies "Stardust: The David Bowie Story", written by Henry Edwards and Tony Zanetta and "Backstage Passes" written by Bowie's ex-wife Angela Bowie, he threatened the producers with a lawsuit. Hence, no Bowie songs were used, and the script was partially re-written to avoid unnecessary resemblance between Bowie and the Bowie-style character Brian Slade.
I think Haynes should have made Velvet Goldmine like it was Glam Rock version of a 60s Fellini film and not like how it is, which is the Glam Rock version of Citizen Kane.
There-- I said my piece. And its good to know that you recommend I'm Not There, Mr. Emerson.
I was only 12 when Blood in the Tracks came out. Funny, I had always thought we were a little closer in age than that. Anyway, I sort of discovered Dylan after he was washed up (in some people's estimation). Like you, I sang "Blowin' in the Wind" in elementary school but thought it was a Peter, Paul, and Mary song. I had no awareness of Dylan or a lot of other less than squeaky clean rock until I got a job at a carwash when I was 16 (I even remember reading something about him in the newspaper in the mid-70s and wondering who this Bob Dye-lan was--that's how I pronounced it in my head). That was about the time Dylan went Christian and a lot of people wrote him off. The carwash radio station played the old stuff, though, and I heard "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Times They Are a Changin'" and suddenly I was buying up 10 to 15 year old music that sounded a lot fresher than anything from the late 70s (I discovered punk rock a little late, too. They simply didn't play it in my town and I was pretty leery of the kids with the pink mohawks). Eventually, I worked my way up to his Christian stuff and found a lot to like even there but from '65 to '75 he (and the Rolling Stones) was incredible (with a few duds) and no matter how much I listen to it it never sounds like "oldies" while a lot of even my favorite stuff from the period, does. Such as the Beatles, I have to say. Anyway, I'll probably have to wait a long time for this movie to reach my neck of the woods but I'm primed. And just for the record, Dylan is not just a great songwriter with a funny voice (the most some of my friends will concede about his talent). He's a great musician and great singer with an unusual (and unusually evolving) voice. Oh, and one of the greatest five or six songwriters in the history of music. If I have gone more than a month since 1979 without playing a Dylan album I would be very surprised. No other artist comes close to that mark for me.
JE: Hey, I was only 17 when you were 12 (my birthday's in late October, so I was usually the among the youngest in my class)! Of course, that doesn't seem like much difference now, but...
Sorry, no offense meant, old bean. I just seriously thought I remembered from the Star Wars thing that we were about the same age then, when 5 years would have been quite a lot. Also sorry to see the way I gushed about Dylan. I'm not usually like that. Probably only baseball can get me as gushy as Blonde on Blonde. I guess I'll go listen to "Catfish".
JE: No offense taken, young(er) bean! Just kidding. And I just listened to "Blonde on Blonde" (and a few other Dylans) as my iPod soundtrack all the way from Toronto to Seattle (5 hours)... and there's lots to gush about. (And I've been through the same thing with baseball. I'm sure Dennis at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule feels similarly...)