I'm Not There by CJ Simonson

Note—Steve has seen this movie as well, and we both agreed that it would be difficult to talk about in a review. Steve passed but I’m up for the challenge, and if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about.

I’m Not There has so many strange and interesting qualities to it that it could take days to describe them all to you. Whether it be the fact that they never say Bob Dylan’s name once or the fact that they parallel him to an older Billy the Kid. The different “versions” of Dylan are all done with a central theme but all portrayed separately from one another.

Its important to note that I have never heard of Dylan. I’ve never seen him and his songs up until now were unheard by me. The stories are all intertwined in very different ways. On one hand you have Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) a small African American boy hopping from town to town using his own voice to sing Dylan’s music, and on the other Jack Rollins, a musician who’s story is shot in a documentary style.

All the actors have different ways leading the central character, and some fail and some succeed. Cate Blanchett remains superior as Jude Quinn, a singer and guitar player who once sung folk music for the rights of the people, but is now turning against himself for reasons unknown to himself. Her commanding lead is the greatest strength of the movie and makes her right now a front runner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Richard Gere, unfortunately, falls on the opposite side of Quinn as Billy the Kid. Parallels are drawn between Jack Rollins and Billy, so director Todd Haynes uses Gere to try and tell a story that seems distant and in no way in connection to either Rollins or Dylan. While I respect trying to make the comparison to the two American idols, this one goes to far past the spectrum of craziness that I’m Not There is.

The movie truly is innovated in that it is able to capture so many emotions on screen at once. It can be upbeat and melancholy, depressing and exciting, blank and colorful all depending on our views and feelings toward Dylan at the time and tale portrayed on screen. The fragment storytelling of the Dylan Biopic is far more risky and successful than a straight by the books movie would have been, and for that I’m Not There becomes one of the best movies of the year. Grade—A