'I'm Not There'

Rating:

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

November 21, 2007

Todd Haynes has thrown down the gauntlet with "I'm Not There," and not just because he remakes Bob Dylan from simply the poet laureate of his generation into the first living celebrity/ singer/songwriter to be portrayed in one movie by six people - including a woman (Cate Blanchett) and a 12-year-old African-American boy (Marcus Carl Franklin).

The challenge presented by "I'm Not There" is partly in recognizing that myths and celebrity are as American as Davy Crockett and Lindsay Lohan, and that self-creation a la Gatsby is what makes this country as pliable as it is great. Or vice versa.

But "I'm Not There" also takes its audience across a Rubicon of moviegoing disillusionment, apathy and sloth: If you are, as you say, so tired of the old, then here is the new. Embrace it, or please shut up. Since premiering at this fall's Venice and Toronto festivals, there has been carping among the critical mass about the Richard Gere episode, which is, OK, a little slow-going. But it's about the aging Dylan living out his life as an ex-gunslinger a la "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (a movie in which Dylan appeared) and it is as organically right as the Cate Blanchett episode. In it, the actress portrays Dylan at his most frenetic - going electric at Newport, being called "Judas!" in London and leading pop music through the crucible of "Blonde on Blonde." After that, nothing on record would seem the same.

There are, after all, some dull spots on the "Mona Lisa," just as there are some excruciating Dylan records. But there is barely a moment that is not brilliant in the opening episode of "I'm Not There," In it, young Franklin plays a character called Woody - as in the character the young Dylan adopted for himself, Woody Guthrie - talking in large letters and planning on being bigger than Elvis, and all the while no one seems to realize that he's black, short and 12, which all recalls the way Dylan buffaloed the folk music establishment in 1960. It's the guitar-slinger side of Dylan that Franklin and Gere play.

And it's the rogue poet side that Ben Whishaw portrays as Arthur, as in Rimbaud, who would be shot by the poet Paul Verlaine, much the way Dylan was shot through the heart when he took a path his fans hadn't chosen.

This is also a movie about the married, unhappy Dylan (Heath Ledger) and the born-again Dylan, played by Christian Bale, who also plays the "Blowin' in the Wind"-era Bob. Dylan's lyrical anger fueled songs that were themselves agents of political awareness and change in an age when such things were possible. Not that Haynes thinks Dylan is possible - just necessary, now more than ever. Just as Haynes is essential to American cinema, but only if it chooses to breathe.

I'M NOT THERE (unrated). Todd Haynes' heroic, gloriously musical exploration of Bob Dylan, American mythology and the fine line between what is true and not, and when we stop caring. With Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Julianne Moore. Written by Haynes and Oren Moverman. 2:15 (adult content, language). At Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., and the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Broadway at 63rd Street, Manhattan.