Film Reviews

I'm Not There

• Rating:
• Director: Todd Haynes
• Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger
• Details: USA / Germany / 135 mins (TBC)

There I was, complaining that movies were getting very samey and wishing that something radically different would come along. In the past few weeks three radically different films have come along - Southland Tales, Youth Without Youth and I'm Not There - and I didn't like any of them. Southland Tales was too much, Youth Without Youth was too 'out-there' and I'm Not There, despite having a living musical legend front and centre, is too boring. Sometimes you just can't please people, can you? I'm Not There sees Blanchett, Bale, Gere, Ledger and more play 'Dylan' at various points of his life. The inverted commas are necessary, as no character is actually called Dylan: Jude Quinn, Woody Guthrie, Arthur Rimbaud, Jack Rollins, Robbie Clark and Billy The Kid take his place to facilitate Dylan's chameleon-like musical persona. Although it has content up the wazoo, the film lacks form, it's self-conscious and too narcissistic to have a point; if the point is that Dylan wasis a genius, that's fair enough - but for a film, something more is needed and narrative is the first thing that comes to mind. The cutting back and forth through time-lines, the constant switching of characters and the mashing together of 'plots' don't gel, but then again, they're not supposed to; according to Bruce Greenwood (who plays a BBC chief keen to expose Dylan/Quinn for a fraud), it's a "rough-and-tumble story". It's funny when it wants to be (an-about-to-go-electric-Dylan machine-gunning an eager audience, meeting The Beatles, poking fun at the lyric-obsessed fans and introducing The Stones' Brian Jones as the guy 'from that groovy covers band'), but it is generally overwhelmed with a self-importance that makes it a closed shop to anyone but Dylan fans - who should lap this up. Haynes has delivered a brave film that just might have reinvented the biopic; but whether it's for the better or not, remains to be seen.

Review by Gavin Burke