All Six Of Capone’s Personalities Weigh In On I’M NOT THERE!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. Forget SOUTHLAND TALES. This is the litmus test movie of the fall. Todd Haynes has made something that demands your participation as an audience, and the result is something that you don’t just watch... you lose yourself in it. I’ll have a lot more to say about this one when I write it up, but for now, here’s Capone with his own words of wisdom on the trippiest film of the fall...

Hey all. Capone in Chicago here. I'm not the biggest Bob Dylan fan in my family; that would be my brother, who somehow manages to find a new piece of information about Dylan (past or present) to share with me at least once a week. That being said, I'm a huge admirer of not only Dylan's musical output, but also the way he's lived his life and managed (or mis-managed his career), constantly doing, in some cases, the exact opposite of what was expected of him. He seemed to hope that his fans followed him, but in the end, I don't think it mattered to him one way or the other. The simple fact is that no matter how much Dylan knowledge you have going into Todd Haynes masterpiece I'M NOT THERE, I promise you that you have never seen a musical biography (or any biography for that matter) quite like this one. You don't need an encyclopedic understanding of Dylan to appreciate this film, but if you happen to have one, I think you'll love it even more. Haynes approach actually makes Dylan's life make more sense and possibly even helps decipher some of the man's more strange directional shifts. For once, the born-again Christian era in Dylan's path seems less like a lark and more like necessity. If you've heard anything about this film before today, you probably know that six different actors play the many faces and phases of Bob Dylan. In one of Haynes' inspired choices, none of these six versions of Dylan are actually called “Bob Dylan.” This opens the gates for Haynes to get creative with the biographical details, while still sticking remarkably close to the facts. The actor getting the most attention for playing Dylan in this film is Cate Blanchett, and if you see her career-defining performance, you'll understand why. She's simply becomes the man in black-and-white footage covering the era popularized by the documentary DON'T LOOK BACK. This was in a time when Dylan actually put himself before the world press and was the definition of confrontational. Blanchett also gets to play the legendary moment where Dylan played electric with The Band in front of a hostile crowd in London. Haynes painstakingly re-creates this moment in music history, and we feel the audience's resentment in our bones. Personally, I was particularly moved by Christian Bale's portrait of two phases of Dylan: the young troubadour first coming to New York and the born-again man who attended small church services and performed to small groups of the faithful. It's a moving moment when he plays before these people as a humble man delivering a simple message in song of survival and overcoming obstacles. Health Ledger plays Dylan as if his career choice changed from musician to actor. This Dylan is the consummate Hollywood asshole, who meets a remarkable woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and breaks her heart. Richard Gere plays the toughest Dylan to pin town. Taking on the persona of an over-the-hill Billy the Kid in hiding from Pat Garrett, Gere's version of Dylan seems to represent the recluse, the man in self-imposed exile. Some might consider him the Dylan of today. Some of what Haynes gives us is fact, and some draws from the mythology that has formed around the Dylan legend over the decades. His meeting with Woody Guthrie, his pissing off of Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival by going electric, his first meeting with the Beatles, with Andy Warhol's factory crew (especially with an Edie Sedgwick-like party girl played by Michelle Williams). And trust me when I say, you haven't met Allen Ginsberg until you've seen him played by David Cross. Haynes also borrows his visual cues from the films of the various eras he's portraying. Some of this footage is made to look like a documentary about Dylan, some borrows from D.A. Pennebaker's footage in DON'T LOOK BACK, some looks like a classic '70s Western, and it all looks fantastic. I haven't met a Todd Haynes film I didn't like, from his unauthorized biography of Karen Carpenter told with Barbie dolls (SUPERSTAR) to SAFE with Julianne Moore (who appears briefly in I'M NOT THERE) to VELVET GOLDMINE to his devastating last film FAR FROM HEAVEN. Haynes has a gift for peeling back the fiction to show you the truth, but he also loves adding layers to the legend in an effort to provide insight and clarity. I haven't even mentioned the remarkable music choices he draws from, not the usual collection of familiar Dylan tunes, but an array of largely lesser-known works that enhance the stories being told. I'M NOT THERE is clearly a labor of love, but it is also an essential example of how to tell an artist's story without limiting yourself to one aspect of their career. To use recent examples, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles both had many phases and musical directions in their long careers. So why didn't their biopics show us that? Probably because the filmmakers thought the task to daunting and sweeping. Haynes shows that it's possible by simply getting creative and possibly a little obsessive about your subject matter. I've said it a couple times recently, and I'm sure I'll say it again before the year is out, but this is one of my favorite films of the year. Capone