I'm Not There

The movie itself might seem somewhat inexplicable, at least insofar as there's nothing really within the movie that ties any of the pretty much discrete narratives together, so it's interesting that the movie lets itself be propped up by the reality of Dylan's already gigantic mythology. It's not a biopic in the sense that it really tries to explain it's subject to the audience, or even present any kind of new insight into him. It seems like ultimately what Haynes tried to do--or at least all he accomplished doing--was to make a movie out of Dylan's mythology. And he even tied it less the actual Bob Dylan, or the actual Robert Zimmerman, than it already was.

I especially liked how each of the different narratives was really a completely different kind of film. Julianne Moore pretty much existed in a flat-out parody of Joan Baez from the Scorcese doc; Heat Ledger was in some kind of contemporary character-driven drama about a relationship and it's disintegration; Cate Blanchett wandered around in a Fellini homage; Richard Gere in an even more psychedelic version of the Billy the Kid story than Peckinpah's original, but that was obviously the reference. Christian Bale was also in some kind of movie, but I'm not sure exactly what. The only one who seemed to really exist in just this movie was the Franklin kid, but maybe there was another type of movie he was supposed to living through. I also liked the ways some of the stories bled into each occasionally without ever really trying to account for each other in any especially satisfactory or clear way.

Ultimately, though, like Control, I don't think the movie ever managed to explain why the subject was interesting. If you weren't already interested in Dylan, I doubt you'd walk away from the movie wanting to go out and get any of his albums. I wonder, is there a music biopic that makes its subject interesting to someone who might watch it with not interest in him/her beforehand?