I’m not the biggest Bob Dylan fan on the planet by any stretch of the imagination. I respect what he did, but I find a lot of his material difficult to listen to. It always seemed to me like he was groping (tone)blindly for the right note and usually not making it. Not to mention the mumbling—for someone who seemed to have a lot to communicate, he often fell short of the mark on basic comprehensibility.
However, I thought I’d give I’m Not There a chance because the premise—several different people, including Richard Gere, a black boy and a woman depicting the songwriter, after a fashion—seemed interesting. I think I missed the point altogether, if it was meant to be more than: misunderstood man becomes unwilling voice of a generation and resents it when others see him as more than he wants to see himself. It’s a meandering, pseudopsychedlic film that reminded me at times of a Beatles movie parody and at others of some pompous, pretentious seventies flick steeped in symbolism that no one other than the creator could possibly suss out.
It has its moments. Christian Bale is amazingly good as Dylan, and Cate Blanchett probably channels his essence better than anyone. Heath Ledger isn’t Dylan, really, but he’s as good in this film as in anything I’ve seen him do.
I fell asleep during the scene where “Arthur Rimbaud” counted down his seven rules. I missed numbers three through six. Didn’t bother to go back and catch up on the missing bits.
