Review of I'm Not There (2007) by Waldo I — 25 Mar 2009

Every little moment is stolen from some corner of the Dylan mythos, and if you aren't pretty familiar with him already you might get lost trying to decipher the messy dreamscape. But it's hard not to fall jealous in the face of such a creative masterpiece, regardless of the human subject. Todd Haynes gets all the credit for this one.

Joan Baez said she never really knew Dylan. That he was impossibly remote. He couldn't be pressed to satisfy. Now, I've heard Dylan fans express disappointment in the film's biographical failures. It doesn't aspire to operate as an introduction piece, a straight-forward account for the masses. It's not a movie with which to initiate your girlfriend. But I think it's appropriate for a film to understand his elusive nature as his magnetism. The more you read about Dylan, the more difficult it becomes to reconcile the contradictions he inhabits. And so becomes a movie that refuses to strand itself in a moment, a movie that fits its invented hero with the ugly romanticism of open interpretation.

Some films choose to distill a single artistic concept, a single human theme, and explore it (with varying levels of competence). This movie takes ten on its back easy. Ambition. Talent. Appeal. The disciplines of lovers, the futility of causes, success as an executioner, and the devastating lonliness of artistic conception. "Never create anything. It will be misinterpreted. It will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life, and it will never change." When the sound of triumph is a broken man's cautions, you've abandoned your popcorn audience. And what could be more Dylan?