It is always hard for me to speak about certain sorts of things that I really love and admire and feel inspired by. This film is one of those things. Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle is another one of those things. And Bob Dylan’s music is one of those things too. I just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle and I just finished watching Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” which is a movie based on the music and life of Bob Dylan. Six actors portray aspects of Dylan. My favourites were Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Wishshaw, and Cate Blanchett. The others (Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale [was Kris Kristofferson supposed to be him also?])were interesting too (although I think that Christian Bale was a bit too physically strong to come across as a young slight Dylan - unless the point was to underscore the strength as something that was there but hidden. Dylan thus being implicated as pretending to be more fragile, quiet and vulnerable than he truly was).
I’ve giving Cate Blanchett the Academy Award for Best Actress. The academy might not reciprocate, particularly with Julia Roberts getting away with wearing a bikini while she was 4 months pregnant (now that’s acting) in a war movie, and her being some kind of queen of Hollywood. Anyway I know they have a commitment to getting it wrong based upon a long tradition, and who am I to interfere? Todd Haynes also gets the Award for Best Director. And while I’m at it, I’m also giving awards to Marcus Carl Franklin and Ben Wishshaw. I live in a fantasy world.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter who rewards it with awards, to me, because it has rewarded me. Seeing it has been my reward. It is pointless to talk about it really because all I have to say about it is an expression of my enthusiasm for it, and describing it is unnecessary because it is described already quite enough.
Still, I will say that there are many clever things about the movie (I particularly like the way that concerts, photographs, and album covers were reproduced, all perfectly in the visual style of the times - and some of the lyrics were visualized in an entertaining way too [“I saw a young girl beside a dead pony,” stuck out for me], and some of them were interpreted in interesting ways [positively 4th street, ballad of a thin man] and all of it is very good at making it all be for me like a Dylan experience, which always ends a little sadly (although sweetly too with that extended harmonica bit [the only bit with the actual Dylan seen] from mr tambourine man).
These sorts of stories about these sorts of people always end a little sadly. These sorts of stories. They are the sort of stories like the story of Jack Kerouac, for instance, which always ends sadly for me. It might not end sadly for someone else, of course, this story or any other story that ends that way for me.
I don’t know if this movie puts anything into focus, but it is evocative of something that is interesting for me, and it gets to me in a way I can’t describe, and maybe that’s the way I like it.
It makes me feel free, and it makes me feel sad. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And it makes me feel like I don’t care if my future boss is reading this and won’t hire me now because of it. Can you imagine? Nothing’s sacred anymore.
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