More like ‘I’m so there’
While the gimmick of having Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan begs at least giving “I’m Not There” a look, Todd Haynes’ lyrical, evocative film is a masterpiece, with merits far beyond the novelty of uncanny Dylan impressions. Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin all take up the Dylan mantle, expressing in many different ways another, and another, side of Bob Dylan.
Embracing the many sides of Dylan’s public and private life, six different actors portray the different personas that he has embodied throughout his long career, and this is a fascinating and successful way of exploring how the masks Dylan wore and the stories he made up were a way of expressing himself, a way of hiding himself, and simply a way of promoting himself. It’s a very interesting way to look at fame in our contemporary society, even as it portrays a different time.
But above all, it is a very interesting way of looking at a genius whose lyrics are nothing short of poetry and whose capacity for invention and self-invention is brilliantly expressed in this effectively confusing film, which, like many of its subject’s songs, is best understood on an intuitive rather than a literal level.
Dylan himself co-wrote and starred in a film in 2003, “Masked and Anonymous,” but this vastly superior film comes closer to capturing the poetic vision of his songs. I am always in awe of truly successful abstraction such as this film; I find myself wondering how anyone can write something so confusing that somehow makes sense to anyone besides its creator.
But “I’m Not There” does make sense; it conveys the essential quality of Bob Dylan’s work: transformation. The concept of multiple identities that Todd Haynes wrote for this character is not a clever, artsy gimmick, it is a stroke of genius, describing the ineffable elements of longing and fantasy that drive artists to create themselves, and to create works of art, like the songs of Bob Dylan, and like this film.
“I’m Not There” is currently available to rent.
The Mobile Public Library’s TGI Thursday Indie Film Series has some particularly well-chosen new releases in July, and I cannot emphasize this enough as an appealing cheap date. July 17 at 7 p.m. is “Persepolis,” a black-and-white cartoon based on the incredibly popular, autobiographical graphic novel that you can pretend to have already read if you want to further increase your indie street cred, as only the reading of political graphic novels can.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane ‘Marji’ Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah’s defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own. The film is an animation/biography/drama and runs 95 minutes. It is rated PG-13.
On Thursday, July 24 at 7 p.m., the library is showing “Starting Out in the Evening,” starring Frank Langella and Lauren Ambrose, the latter of “Six Feet Under” fame, and the former an actor who shot a movie, “The Novice,” here in Mobile a few years ago.
He plays an aging author and she plays an ambitious graduate student writing a thesis on him. The May-December couple comes to realize they have more in common than they thought in this complex and gentle love story. The film runs 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. For more information, call 208-7097.
Contact Asia Frey at afrey@lagniappemobile.com.
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