I'm Not There

If you've been wondering about the Todd Haynes film, I'm Not Here, please take my advice and go see it immediately...Today, we drove to Brive la Gaillarde to see it in the little Rex Cinema. I am still recovering from my encounter with a gastero intestinal virus and burped all through the showing, fortunately we were the only people in the theater.
I have been a fan of Todd Haynes since his now banned early film, The Karen Carpenter Story. A bizarre history of 70's soft rock icon Karen Carpenter's death from anorexia as told by a child using Barbie and Ken Dolls. The film was banned by the Mattel Toy Corporation for copy write infringement. I guess they could never get over the fact that the child told the story by whittling away at the Barbie doll with a pen knife.
Since then Haynes found audience acceptance with mvies like Velvet Goldmine and more recently, the brilliant Far From Paradise. In each movie he was able to depict the eras he used in his stories with emotional imagery that went beyond mere styling. He had the look, the feel, the iconic images down to the last detail. Color, lighting and frame shots did as much to tell his stories as the narrative line..
In I'm Not There, he goes beyond any attempt of literal story telling. He presents a multidimensional biography of Bob Dylan played by 6 different actors. He interweaves archival footage with reconstructed imagined footage, fact with sheer hallucinatory fantasy. Imaginary characters who play different aspects of the artist.
Of note is the actress Cate Blanchette who plays Dylan or the character "Jude" during the Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde period. She nails him, a performance that could only have been achieved by actually living inside the skin of the character.
The young Dylan is a character named Woody played by a young black actor named Marcus Carl Franklin. Another brilliant performance. The scenes of the young Woody playing and a particularly great performance with Richie Havens are hair raisingly great! I have to mention the composite feminine relationship aspect of the film embodied in the character that Charlotte Gainsbourg, Miss Gainsbourg is the daughter of the legendary Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and is a powerful actress and somehow morphs between the mysterious Suze Rotolo and Dylans first wife continuously. She really evokes the look of Suze.
This film in its Felliniesque leaps into poetic fantasy could tell you a lot about Bob Dylan but if you know anything about Bob Dylan, you will learn nothing new, in fact as far as facts go, you will learn nothing.. That is the sheer success of this film. It is a painting, a poem, it's a piece of art about another artist. If I was Bob Dylan, I would approve!