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Christian Bale |
Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is...
I'M NOT THERE
Directed by Todd Haynes
Certificate 15
I SEEM to have missed out on something here. But I’ve just spent 135 overlong minutes trying to come to terms with a film that made no sense to me whatsoever – until someone was kind enough to explain that yes, it was meant to be Bob Dylan up there on the screen, all six of him, and the fact that he was played by Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw, Richard Gere and a black kid named Marcus was, well, meaningful.
I’m afraid that simply meant it comes over as a load of pretentious tosh from writer-director Todd Haynes. Particularly as Mr Dylan’s alter egos all have different names, with Gere actually playing an aging Billy the Kid, complete with Stetson and six-guns. And for the life of me, I can’t remember the name Bob Dylan ever being used.
It seems Todd is showing us different aspects of the singing legend through his confused and rebellious life. And that eventually these six characters will fuse together into the main man as the film dodges through time and space, with black and white flashbacks turning to colour and back again.
Apparently the director was talking to Dylan’s long-time manager Jeff Rosen early on about the project, when Rosen told him: “This is your own weird interpretation of Bob Dylan, and that’s all you have to worry about.” ’Nuff said?
But there are two redeeming features. The music, full of protest and angst, has Dylan’s wonderful folk guitar filling the sound-track, containing all the passion of a frustrated visionary self-inflicting wounds to make his voice heard.
And a startling performance by Cate Blanchett: she looks uncannily like Dylan with her mop of dark curls and pale haunted face, and she even sounds like him. Her portrayal has outraged some, and been mocked by others. For me, the girl is incredible.
For these alone I can almost forgive Mr Haynes his indulgence at our expense.
But not quite. |
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