The Pagan Agenda

Rating:

Todd Haynes’ paradigm-setting biopic of Bob Dylan, ‘I’m Not There’, is as defiant of interpretation as the man it portrays. Certainly no biopic has been done in quite this fashion, not least of all due to its unusual rendering of the subject through multiple selves intermittently dreaming one another and embodied by actors of differing sex and race. But there is also the sublime collision that results particularly in the center of this film as a near-hallucinatory complexity unfolds onscreen and there is just no adequate definition for what it is, it transcends the simple symbolic subtext and becomes as hypnotic and ethereal as music itself (wait for the white-faced hillybilly singing about Acapulco with almost Lynch-level absurdity). Perhaps this was part of the conceit of the director, or a fortunate mistake, perhaps this film is so far gone and mislead that it becomes analogous to the emperor’s new clothes and each person needs to draw their own conclusions on what they are seeing, without the familiar tropes to satisfy the simple evaluation. I will give the film this: it is unlike anything I have seen before, and it demands multiple viewings.

Having seen the film only once I feel ill-equipped to commit to anything completely, but I will hesistantly go on record as saying I do not think it is the masterpiece which others are lauding it to be, but I can see where they are coming from. It is a great film no doubt, but I am inclined to think it is the wrong film, wrong in its ambitions. I cannot assess it apart from my devout love for Dylan, but I do suspect that the film is far too esoteric to appeal to a wide audience, or for that matter to anyone not already inducted in the cult of Dylan. This to me is its great fault. I have long tried to articulate to friends what it is about Dylan that is so significant, and on my blog I compiled a playlist of songs which possess this elusive virtue, and if you hear it you hear it, if not so be it. But I always thought this biopic project had the potential to be the bridge for the uninitiated to grasp the serial shape-shifter as a phenomenon worth praising, an egoist of the highest pedigree. I envisioned the great passages from his life and his memoirs, the meetings with Woody Guthrie, the Judas incident, the pivotal years after the motorcycle accident, the living in fear of celebrity, which strangely are all in the film but which never aspire to more then paint-strokes towards a larger image, filtered into the chaos. Perhaps I am slightly resistant to how innovative this biopic is, how it does not let up enough to allow some of the lived moments breathe. This is all too-often the Dylan ensnared in a camera lens, the enigma of Dylan, the enigma to even himself. The brute liar fraud junkie misogynst adulterer Bob Dylan is given an inordinate amount of attention in this film, and lost in the flash bulb mayhem is the gentle soul Dylan who manifests so beautifully in ‘Dont Look Back’, and who in this film is scarcely seen, save for some obscure references via Richard Gere’s variation and the obscenely underused Christian Bale.

I admit that the full motivation of the Richard Gere/Billy segment was lost on me, having not seen the movie it references and knowing very little of that portion of Dylan’s life, and as I said before this becomes a film geared towards the arcane knowledge of the man, and less a straight-forward accessible narrative. Gere’s Billy possesses some of the tender aspects of Dylan many of us have come to recognize and love, but I wanted that aspect to be more prominent, less abstracted, and this was not that sort of film; I wanted to at times feel without the interface of the conceptual, but I suppose in a way not unlike Dylan’s verses, the experience is coded and there to be mined. There are so many Easter eggs for the Dylan fan nestled in this film that it becomes a purely revelatory romp for us while I imagine greatly befuddling to anyone else.

That said, I loved it. I loved it with all its flaws. I will not say much more about it until I have seen it again and then perhaps I will write an intelligent review, whatever that is. I will say Haynes used a great selection of Dylan tracks in the film and put them to great purpose. Thankfully the song ‘I’m Not There’ does appear in its entirety in the film and is even covered by Sonic Youth in the end credits, thus finally allowing some audible clarity to the lyrics. Cate Blanchett was of course brilliant, but that is to be expected. I wanted much more Christian Bale who was equally brilliant. Yeah. Wow. A review as confused and tangential as the film it tries to describe.

P.S. Haynes is more ‘Poison’ than ‘Far From Heaven’ in this outting, pushing a vision uniquely his own.

I’m Not There – Bob Dylan