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Moviola > Films > I'm Not There
I'm Not There (15) 135 mins "All I Can Do Is Be Me Whoever That Is" Six incarnations of Bob Dylan: an actor, a folk singer, an electrified troubadour, Rimbaud, Billy the Kid, and Woody Guthrie. Put Dylan's music behind their adventures, soliloquies, interviews, marriage, and infidelity. Recreate 1960s documentaries in black and white. Put each at a crossroads, the artist becoming someone else. Jack, the son of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, finds Jesus; handsome Robbie falls in love then abandons Claire. Woody, a lad escaped from foster care, hobos the U.S. singing; Billy awakes in a valley threatened by a six-lane highway; Rimbaud talks. Jude, booed at Newport when he goes electric, fences with reporters, pundits, and fans. He won't be classified. "Marcus Carl Franklin plays Woody, an 11-year-old African-American boxcar-rider who symbolises Dylan's debt to Woody Guthrie. Christian Bale plays Jack Rollins, the early folk-guitar hero. Ben Whishaw is the poet Arthur Rimbaud, depicting a move from the political to the personal. Heath Ledger is Robbie, a counterculture movie actor depicting Dylan's dark side: selfish, reactionary, misogynist. Richard Gere plays Billy, the ageing hobo in retreat from this wicked world. Most scene-stealing of all is Cate Blanchett, who gives a gender-bending performance as Jude, the Dylan who played the "Judas" tour of England and rejected unplugged folk for loud electric guitars. Only Blanchett and Bale do actual Dylan impersonations - and Blanchett's is better. In fact, it's brilliant." Peter Bradshaw "Coming away from I'm Not There, we have, first of all, heard some great music. We've seen six gifted actors challenged by playing facets of a complete man. We've seen a daring attempt at biography as collage. We've remained baffled by the Richard Gere cowboy sequence, which doesn't seem to know its purpose. And we have been left not one step closer to comprehending Bob Dylan, which is as it should be." Roger Ebert
Last modified: 06-Mar-2009 |
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