I'm Not There (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

I am one of those Dylan fans that must own everything he created, and read everything written about him that I can get my hands on. I consider myself Dylan-obsessed. "I'm Not There" will not make sense if you don't know about Dylan's influences and the people that surrounded him. This movie touches on just about everything from his past, whether fact or myth. The main characters never seem to meet or interact with each other. There are crossovers between the characters such as when the boy imitating Woody Guthrie train-hopping from place to place singing Dust Bowl era folksongs leaves his guitar on a train later to be found by an aging Billy The Kid played by Richard Gere on the run from the law or the end of the world. Another crossover is the Jack character played by Christian Bale portraying a finger-pointing folksinger, "voice of a generation" that is the subject of a film about his life and eventual rejection of the political folk world. The actor playing Jack is Robbie played by Heath Ledger, who meets a woman played by the beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg. They become lovers, then marry and eventually divorce. She is supposed to represent Dylan's relationships with Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds all rolled into one. Arthur Rimbaud is not so much a character as he is a narrator played by Ben Whishaw seeming to give no real answers to whomever is questioning him and sounding a lot like Dylan in the mid-60's. Cate Blanchett plays Dylan during his amphetamine electric days. Blanchett's performance by itself would be the only reason you need to see this film. She is so magnificent, you don't have to even pretend that she's Dylan. She IS Dylan as far as I'm concerned. I can't imagine anyone who could have been better. Sidekicks Allen Ginsberg, Bobby Neuwirth and Edie Sedgwick are portrayed in the movie. A Joan Baez like character played by Julianne Moore makes an appearance. The Bobby Neuwirth character is on the receiving end of a vicious putdown by Blanchett's Dylan filled with all kinds of vulgar language I can't say here. A Dylan-obsessed fan will pick up on the visual hints throughout the film such as the tarantula. You will hear Dylan quotes throughout the dialogue. Some scenes are reminiscent of real events while others are more dreamlike and seem to be what someone wished had happened instead of what really did. I watched the film with my mother who is in her 70's and only a casual listener of his music and she didn't really get it. It was sort of a lukewarm reaction from her. She hasn't read anything about Dylan. She reacted to the scenes Blanchett was in and the Jack character the most because they evoke scenes of Dylan back in the day. I would say this movie leaves you with quite a lot to chew on when it's over - in particular the scenes where Arthur Rimbaud gives advice for someone who wants to go into hiding: Create Nothing. Advice no artist or writer ever listens to. You can never take back that which you have created and you will never be in control of it. Look for Jim James from My Morning Jacket performing during the Richard Gere scenes - not to be missed. Overall, I would say if you are a major Dylan fan you must get this. If you really don't know much about Dylan I would tell you to read about him or watch some of the footage available of him performing and being interviewed first so that you have the fun of recognizing things in the film. In watching it you never can tell what exactly was created by Dylan and what was created by his fan's image of him - or even the media's image of him. It all sort of mixes together here. Also, Thank you to whomever was responsible for putting the real Dylan songs in the background throughout the film. It really would have taken away from the film had they not been there. One last thought, take this film for what it is: an imaginative piece of art that never tries to peel layers off of any of the Dylan myths, but maybe tries to add a couple more layers instead.

There is something about "I'm Not There" that lets you know at once it is more than a biopic. Yes, the main character changes from the exuberant, tall-tale telling Woody(Marcus Carl Franklin); to poet Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Wishaw), to entitled Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), to movie star Robbie (Heath Ledger) to folk "hero" Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) to Billy the Kid (Richard Gere) and back and forth between them. This is an homage, as Todd Haynes reveals on the commmentator track, to many of the different directors in the sixties and seventies. Fellini, Goddard, and Peckinpah are mentioned, but I see glimmers of Scorcese and Sergio Leone.The shuttle of characters works incredibly smoothly, and the variety of film techniques also helps to delineate the six characters.Most of Jude's (Blanchett) story, a black and white Fellini tribute, consists of sparring. Blanchett embues Jude with some of the ugliness Dylan is supposed to have shown to friends and fans during the time his style deviated from straight protest. A journalist acts like everyman, or perhaps even Jude's conscience, turning up even in the elevator, asking "If you are not singing protest songs any more, does that mean you do not believe what you were singing? And if so, what do you believe?" Dali-esque photography, such as a tarantula crawling across the lens of the camera, continues the Fellini theme.Robbie's story is splashed with the pale colors and spare dialogue of a Jean-Luc Goddard film, and like Goddard, the story of Claire and Robbie (mirroring Dylan's first marriage, and the Vietname war) struggles with traditional expectations of women. I wonder if there isn't a bit of Martin Scorcese in this scene too, with the raw emotion between Robbie and Claire, the theme of redemption...Robbie being perhaps the Dylan that stands to lose the most.Gere plays "Billy", based on Dylan's fancy of himself as an outlaw. A Peckinpah-ish vision of Western scenery in which Halloween costumed people pack up all their belongings and shuffle off to accomadate a 6 lane highway is featured. Someone dressed as a soldier in clown face sings a song for a girl who's committed suicide and lies in an open casket: "Goin to Acapulco" which to date, I think, is the most beautiful Dylan song I've heard. Now we're not watching Peckinpah, we're watching Leone, specifically, the prison scene in  Il Buono Il Brutto Il Cattivo  when soldiers are forced to sing to cover up the noise of torture.Billy's function as far as the Bard is concerned is to keep him off the world stage for awhile, mimicking Dylan's hiatus in the late sixties. The story picks up with Jack Rollins(Bale), now a pastor in an evangelical church.Christian Bale makes a valiant effort at portraying what I'm sure he or Haynes thinks an evangelical pastor is like. But it comes off as rather stiff. The film style, however, is spot on, recalling grainy seventies documentaries about "the silent majority", and "the New Evangelicals", at a time the US elected a President who talked openly about being "born again". It also has the look and feel of Christian "scare" films of that era such as  A Thief in the Night .The stories of Rimbaud (Wishaw), the poet; and of Woody (Franklin), ares as compelling and well done.I was confused about one thing. The choice of Franklin, an eleven year old black kid, who never gets treated like a kid, and who never gets treated as blacks were in the segregated south, to symbolize the twenty-something b.s.-ing Dylan in his first years in New York, was brilliant.So why did Cate Blanchett have to dress like a boy? Did the writer or director ever consider the character, Judy Quinn? Just curious.

Dillon has openly confessed that he made a deal with the “Chief Commander”, referring to Lucifer. Hear this: There is no pact (including a blood pact) that cannot be broken with Lucifer. Only the pact with Almighty God is a one-and done. He writes your name into the Book of Life and he has no need for an eraser. He said “Nothing can pluck you from my hand”.

This is an ambitious, exhilarating, inventive and amusing cinematic riff on the life, legend, music and lyrics of Bob Dylan, one of the most pivotal artists of the last sixty years ~ whether you like him or not {and I love him}.Todd Haynes {Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, Carol} has created a movie equivalent of stream of consciousness prose, not unlike so many of the song lyrics by its subject, particularly the earlier ones. An eclectic group of actors play 'versions' of the man from Minnesota in his differing guises and at different stages in his life, including our own Ben Whishaw, young Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, and, in a much praised tour de force, the amazing Cate Blanchett, who gives us a Dylan no male actor could have equalled.There's a typically likeable and honest performance by Charlotte Gainsbourg as the main woman in his life {a version of both Dylan's first wife Sara and his New York lover Suze Rotolo} and a brief but lovely cameo from the late Richie Havens.Dylan's song lyrics ~ from Mr Tambourine Man to Cold Irons Bound, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands to Please Mrs Henry ~ have often been so full of film-like imagery it's a wonder nothing like this has been so successfully done before. Dylan himself has tried, but it needed a visionary such as Haynes to create something as fascinating and, in filmic terms, as sophisticated as this marvellous, not to say courageous, kaleidoscopic improvisation on the life and work of the only lyricist ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize in literature.Apparently, even Bob himself liked it.

Which such an unorthodox artist such as Dylan, a traditional cradle to the grave wouldn't really work (his nibs probably wouldn't give consent to use his music anyway).The problem I have with "I'm not there" is that the sections of the movie featuring Blanchett are so strong, it puts the rest of the film to shame & I waiting for the movie to get back to her, plus the Blanchett scenes are loosely based on real events which gives her performance some extra meat.But the sound track to the movie is whole different kettle of Bob Dylan fish, with lots of strong re-imagining of mostly lesser know Dylan tracks & defiantly worth buying

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film and was pleasantly surprised. This is a film that approaches Bob Dylan from different angles rather than head on. Six actors play different aspects of Dylan (superb performances by Cate Blanchett doing an electric-period Dylan and Marcus Carl Franklin playing the myth Dylan created of his childhood). The film moves back and forth between the different stories and is utterly compelling, especially the bit with Richard Gere as Billy the Kid living in a Depression-era rural backwater that is almost hallucinogenic. It's the most original and compelling biopic I've seen and pays tribute to the elusiveness of Dylan the man. This is a film I will see again.

Strange and surprisingly enthralling unique film, brilliantly acted with a fantastic soundtrack combining Dylan originals and great cover versions. It tells you something that it's the only film that Dylan has ever given his blessing to about himself.

This isn't the first time I've had this problem with Amazon on film purchases: this film is dubbed into German! Looking through the other versions of this film available through Amazon it wld seem there are several non-English versions being sold. Be very careful!