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Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in director Todd Haines I'm Not There

I'm Not There

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: R
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

I’m Not There started out nicely enough, but after the first twenty minutes of mind boggling sequences I saw people leaving the theater. I, being no philistine, decided to ride the experience through. “Perhaps there’s something I was missing?” Sadly, if that were only the case! I’m Not There had high aspirations; and it is those hopes that set it up for its monumental failure.

If you simply judged the film from the previews and commercials, as I did, you probably thought you were going to see a biopic about Bob Dylan’s life: the struggle for exposure, drug problems (or a lack thereof), women problems, and limelight troubles. The false advertising left the audience and I unabashedly disappointed—because I’m Not There had nothing to do with Bob Dylan except for the use of his image.

Enter director Todd Haynes, the story of this fable that is Bob Dylan’s life. I imagine Haynes cursed the way the film was pushed by advertisers, because he might have wanted the audience to know what they were getting into, after all he typically creates avant-garde films. Haynes decided to tell the Dylan story through facsimiles, which went by several names. Those different stories, that weren’t correlated, were played by six different actors that looked and acted like Bob Dylan, but weren’t. Confused yet?

But this technique doesn’t make itself necessary; it feels too high concept and may have caused the writers to attempt more risky devices than they would have with a normal narrative. Out of all the narratives the least know actor did the best job—Marcus Carl Franklin (the small black boy) was the diamond in the rough. He was lively and likable, where as Heath Ledger bore little resemblance to any Bob Dylan that I know of (bless his soul), Cate Blanchett was doing whatever the hell she wanted, and Ben Whishaw’s monologues added nothing to the experience.

I haven’t explained the plot yet have I? Well…there isn’t one; the film is a montage of jumbled up Dylan lyrics, personified album art covers and epic one-liners. Even a Bob Dylan fan can’t think of much that redeemed this film, and like most in the audience—I would recommend you avoid I’m Not There as if it were the plague.