I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)

[domino harvey]

It's a Weinstein title

[Lino]

Just saw it finally the other day and besides being blown away by its sheer effortless genius (and not wanting to get deeper into its many interpretational views, which would take many, many posts as this is a film that really pays repeated viewings), I would like to point out some key aspects that really make this film work.

Firstly, the editing: if ever there was a film that needed expert hands at the editing machine, this is it. To be able to juggle so many stories and storylines, while at the same time keeping the viewer emotionally captivated by them all, is an achievement in itself.

Now, I've never really cared for Dylan's music (only got one album, Desire) but nevertheless I found myself thoroughly enjoying it because, wisely, the filmmakers used the music dramatically, in the sense that key songs were used in key moments to the fullest result. Might get the soundtrack now.

Each and every actor was ace! In fact, this is one of the best casting jobs I've ever had the chance to experience on a movie, right down to the smallest extra. Amazing job all around. Some faces were so genuinely dated, it almost felt that I was watching a movie made in the 70's, especially in the Richard Gere segment. Haynes must have really taken to heart Richard Avedon's legendary book on the American West. Some faces seemed pulled straight down from it. And yes, it felt kinda strange seeing Ledger up there. Still pretty much alive in our minds.

Finally, the movie was also a pleasure to watch in that it provided me a chance to revisit almost all of Hayne's filmography in the course of its duration: flashes of Far from Heaven, Poison and Dottie gets Spanked flew by me as if flipping though a Picture Book album. Loved getting that feeling. It was almost like a summation of his work.

I wonder where'll go from here.

[domino harvey]

I can't imagine someone not familiar with Dylan going into the film coming away with anything approaching comprehension, but that's not a criticism. Who says films should be open for everyone?

This movie is so obviously a collection of those "I want do to this in my film"s that all aspiring young filmmakers daydream about, but what makes it so bewildering is all this coming from someone who's already an established filmmaker. It's messy, it's clunky and occasionally embarrassing, but somehow it works. It's got charm, and the film's determined earnestness makes it hard to deny.

[ltfontaine]

I can't imagine someone not familiar with Dylan going into the film coming away with anything approaching comprehension, but that's not a criticism. Who says films should be open for everyone?

Actually, Domino, I think those who do not know Dylan are its best audience. For everyone else, Haynes' film is a reductive, superficial, occcasionally entertaining compendium of chestnuts. As an admirerer of Haynes who was expecting great things from this project, I couldn't be more disappointed, as expressed here (beneath a photo of the Grande Ballroom in all its faded glory).

[chaddoli]

For everyone else, Haynes' film is a reductive, superficial, occcasionally entertaining compendium of chestnuts.

Speak for yourself. Haynes doesn't have to pass a trivia challenge to make a film about Dylan. The film is one artist interpreting another.

[ltfontaine]

Haynes doesn't have to pass a trivia challenge to make a film about Dylan. The film is one artist interpreting another.

Unfortunately, trivia and shallow caricature is as deep as Haynes penetrates, which renders the filmmaker's interpretation of Dylan, well, trivial. I had expected much more from Haynes.

Last I heard, Dylan had still declined to comment on the film. Still true?

[chaddoli]

I'm sure he hasn't seen it. This is no indication on his potential feelings about it. Dude hasn't seen films he wrote.

[Tom Hagen]

Last I heard, Dylan had still declined to comment on the film. Still true?

Dylan did give approval to Haynes to start the project in the first place. My understanding is that he was satisfied with the script.

This movie is so obviously a collection of those "I want do to this in my film"s that all aspiring young filmmakers daydream about

Domino, to that end, I am interested in getting your view of the film's Godard homages (especially the Ledger/Gainsbourg story arc, which was my favorite part of the film). That subject has been taken up elsewhere, but I am interested in hearing what some of the Godardians who post here thought of Haynes' treatment of '60s Godard.

[domino harvey]

I tend to think very little of Godard homages by any filmmaker, but these were fairly harmless-- the echoes of Vivre se vie and Masculin Feminin were unnecessary but less-obnoxious than the 8 1/2-aping. I'm really just very confused by the juvenilia of the film-- if this was Haynes' first film it would be understandable, but so much of this move is just a couple notebooks of first drafts put on film. I think the problem stems from the project's "kooky" structure, which obviously prevented outsiders from coming in and saying "Todd, here's a couple suggestions"-- some artists work well without a net, but this desperately needed a rewrite. I have to laugh at those earlier in the thread who argue that the film is intellectual not emotional-- ha, reverse that. Still, the movie's fun and I was never bored, but a masterpiece it's not.

[Tom Hagen]

Haynes' intial vision of the film was even more sweeping in its homages. According to this piece, in the NYT Sunday Mag last fall, A seventh Dylan, Charlie, “the ‘little tramp’ of Greenwich Village,” -- to be played by Marcus Carl Franklin, I believe -- was eventually cut.

[che-etienne]

Speak for yourself. Haynes doesn't have to pass a trivia challenge to make a film about Dylan. The film is one artist interpreting another.

I enjoyed the film, Chadd, but Haynes is no artist. All in all, "I'm Not There" struck me as conventional, even glossy and glamorous. At least it isn't disingenuous in what it's trying to do. The film lays out a thesis about Dylan's (mostly) public and private life and what that life experience expresses about art, the artist, and society: that to be an artist, and by extension to be human, is to be free from oneself and the reality one creates. And it argues for that thesis very eloquently.

At the same time, the narrative-dramatic structures and various forms of mise-en-scene Haynes employs to that end never coalesce in a meaningful way. There's no style in the holistic sense, only a lot of appropriated and co-opted pieces of style drawn from various sources. This is to say that Haynes makes very pretty collages, but that he's not a collage artist, on the same level as, say, Joseph Cornell. The many pieces and usable parts he draws together are made amenable to a rather conventional thematic progression, involving identifiable themes and emotions. In fact, I would go so far as to claim that this is a fairly standard biopic, or rather, like Michael Mann's "Ali" (a film far closer to greatness, I think, as it has portions which are unqualifiably so), that it stands poised between the better mapped regions and the unknown regions of cinematic space, and eventually gives way to the former.

Of one thing I'm certain, there was a lot of money put into this film and into the building of its reputation and image. Similar in its contradictions and its failures to "Zodiac", it becomes a part of the mythology it attempts to interrogate and meditate upon. Unfortunately, "I'm Not There" seems only half conscious of its own responsibility in this game and thus fails to throw its own existence up for grabs as readily as it does everything else.

[David Ehrenstein]

I enjoyed the film, Chadd, but Haynes is no artist.

HUNH? Who qualifies as an artist in your view?

[ltfontaine]

I'm sure he hasn't seen it.

Haynes says he sent Dylan a copy of the film on disc to watch on the tour bus, but never heard back from Bob.

The film's various cinematic homages are distracting and beside the point, emphasizing the degree to which Haynes is at a loss to deal with Dylan as anything more than just another time-bound icon.

Of course Haynes is an artist, and for me, one of the most talented and interesting filmmakers now working in the American cinema, as expressed in the essay linked above. As much as I admire Superstar, Safe and Far from Heaven, I think his best work is yet to come.

[John Cope]

I think his best work ([Safe]) is far behind him. Nothing since then has remotely equalled that picture's level of rigorous precision. I realize that "rigor" was the formal model for that film so it was a more endemic accomplishment but nonetheless Haynes' subsequent (and previous) fixation on chaotic post-modern pastiche has been a disappointment to me.

I'm sure some will make the argument that pictures like Far From Heaven also display their own particular disciplined exactitude and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that but, for me at least, the results are messy and unhelpfully self-defeating for that reason.

This discussion should probably be in a Haynes as Filmmaker thread...

[David Ehrenstein]

"unhelpful" to whom?

[jbeall]

Speaking of "unhelpful": I have no idea what's been going on for the past three pages of this thread! In some cases I just don't follow your arguments, and in others I simply had a different experience with the film (it didn't leave me cold at all).

If the film has a PoMo sensibility, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The effacement of a coherent subject in favor of pastiche suits the portrayal(s) Dylan juuuuuuuuuust fine. I recall old clips of Dylan wearing clown makeup on stage, and if any artist of the twentieth century embodies the essence of Pierrot, it's him. Dylan's public persona--and for the most part, this is all that this film gives us--just isn't a unitary entity that can be analyzed as such. To its credit, the film barely even tries (with the exception of a few private moments with Gere and Ledger's characters). If Dylan him(?)self never coalesced in a meaningful way, why should the biopic?

Anyway, I loved it. The audience frustration with the impenetrability of Dylan's "core" persona is wonderfully mirrored by the various interlocutors in the film--esp. Bruce Greenwood and Charlotte Gainsbourg--but there's something equally moving about his need to keep shifting, keep moving (esp. the Woody Guthrie, Jack Rollins, and Billy the Kid characters). I'm not the most sophisticated critic, but in my (admittedly limited) understanding, I'm Not There accomplishes formally what it sets out to do. And I agree with David Ehrenstein that you don't have to choose between emotional and intellectual pull--I suspect those who do were expecting an entirely different film.

[flyonthewall2983]

I really liked it, but I was hoping it could have been longer. Did anyone else feel that way?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I really liked it, but I was hoping it could have been longer. Did anyone else feel that way?

I think it had an adequate running time. I could have used more Bale and less Blanchett, though. Even a little more Gere, too. I guess that's why we have deleted scenes, though.

[kaujot]

I really liked it, but I was hoping it could have been longer. Did anyone else feel that way?

I think it had an adequate running time. I could have used more Bale and less Blanchett, though. Even a little more Gere, too. I guess that's why we have deleted scenes, though.

I agree. I thought Blanchett's "facet" was overused and Bales severely underused.

[flyonthewall2983]

It would have been nice to see some scenes between Christian and Julianne, then again I think it'd be great if they did another movie altogether.

[Commander Shears]

I enjoyed the film, Chadd, but Haynes is no artist.

HUNH? Who qualifies as an artist in your view?

A collection of references and impersonations does not a film make, so I would certainly argue against calling this picture 'art'. I spent the whole running time flashing back to Man on the Moon, as the driving force of both films seemed to be 'hey remember that footage of Dylan/Koufman doing ____? Let's reenact it!' Comedies are often guilty of referencing something topical without actually bothering to write a joke about it, and I'm not There was the dramatic equivalent, complete with an embarassingly literal music video and needle drops.

As a major Dylan fan, I recognized many of the biographical and lyrical bits, but that certainly doesn't mean I enjoyed them. I didn't find this film to be oblique, ambigious or any other positive adjective often perscribed it - I simply found it a predictable, utterly pointless act of cinematic masterbation. Haynes is still just playing with dolls in his room; he doesn't really make films; he just pretends he made the ones that others actually did make.

[miless]

A collection of references and impersonations does not a film make,

okay Yoda.

I thought that this film did a great job of encapsulating Dylan's career, while portraying it (in a non-sequential order) in a way that could allow maximal cerebral absorption for the general public. Neither I nor my (ex-)girlfriend could complain about the narrative being too obscure (or populous) that it self-destructed within its own references. We both agreed that Bale's and Gere's performance's were among the most powerful, while Haynes was most definitely attempting to create a narrative to appeal to both Dylan obsessives and the newcomers alike. This is the rare artistically sensible biopic that can appeal to the uninitiated and the obsessive. Only the mainstream audiences were left alienated with the avant-garde structure of this film.

[Commander Shears]

I thought that this film did a great job of encapsulating Dylan's career, while portraying it (in a non-sequential order) in a way that could allow maximal cerebral absorption for the general public. Neither I nor my (ex-)girlfriend could complain about the narrative being too obscure (or populous) that it self-destructed within its own references. We both agreed that Bale's and Gere's performance's were among the most powerful, while Haynes was most definitely attempting to create a narrative to appeal to both Dylan obsessives and the newcomers alike. This is the rare artistically sensible biopic that can appeal to the uninitiated and the obsessive. Only the mainstream audiences were left alienated with the avant-garde structure of this film.

You can't just hang your hat on an undeniable attritube of the film ('avant-garde structure') as a deteriminant of its quality. Why not just say that mainstream audiences are left alienated by the fact that some of it is in black and white? Like most people, I agreed with the fractured narrative style and multiple interpretations (I was referring to impersonations of better films, not of Dylan), but that isn't enough for me to actually like the movie.

On a larger note, your post does relate to what I find to be an unfortunate side-effect and even a significant motivation for many so-called 'avant-garde' or unconventional filmic techniques: the discussion quickly devolves into a group of people defending said technique as artistic and original, and decrying all those who question the film in any way as being 'mainstream audiences' who are alienated by the choice in question. Avoiding convention is sometimes an act of an original voice. Sometimes it is an appropriate extension of the subject matter (as in this case). Often though, it is the act of someone who who feels 'different' is easier to achieve than is 'better'.

[miless]

I don't think that the power of the film relies upon its structure. There were moments where I felt that I was about to cry, but couldn't identify what was making me feel that way (the My Morning Jacket scene with Richard Gere in particular). This film, despite its uncharacteristic narrative jumping, is quite visceral, and I really enjoyed the extreme pulls between emotional states that it caused. Laughing, wincing and crying all at once until the end when I felt that I couldn't really take it anymore (luckily it ended at just the perfect time, enough to leave me drained... but not so long that it became unpleasant).

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I don't think that the power of the film relies upon its structure. There were moments where I felt that I was about to cry, but couldn't identify what was making me feel that way (the My Morning Jacket scene with Richard Gere in particular). This film, despite its uncharacteristic narrative jumping, is quite visceral, and I really enjoyed the extreme pulls between emotional states that it caused. Laughing, wincing and crying all at once until the end when I felt that I couldn't really take it anymore (luckily it ended at just the perfect time, enough to leave me drained... but not so long that it became unpleasant).

I can't say I had that range of emotions with this film, but that one scene is a good example. It's the one moment you describe that I took away from the movie. I thought it was effective because you're there with Gere taking in the situation and letting its power slowly work on you. I guess that those moments were the ones hoped for with Blanchett, but no dice. I loved the film as a formal achievement, but that one scene gave me the Bob Dylan the film was looking for because it worked on more than just its tricks (however good they are).