Friday, May 1, 2015

I'm Not There (2007)

I'm Not There is a very innovative biopic that very loosely based on "the many lives" of Bob Dylan.  Dylan is played by six different actors, including a black child actor, and a woman.  Each character goes by a different name (none of them Bob or Dylan) and they represent different stages of Dylan's life, or rather different parts of his persona.  Cate Blanchett was especially convincing playing a 60s-era Dylan.  I wish I knew a little more about Bob Dylan because I feel like I missed out on a lot of the details that were included in the film that allude to his life.

The film is very stylish with two of the six actors being portrayed in black and white, and one of the six being portrayed in a documentary format.  Time is not linear in the slightest, jumping constantly between personas.  The whole thing is very surreal and sometimes you're not quite sure what to make of what you're seeing on screen.  But it is fitting for such an enigmatic man as Bob Dylan.

The film opens with a motorcycle accident (a reference to Dylan's own motorcycle accident) and Jude Quinn's subsequent autopsy.  I could not help but draw a parallel to the opening of Lawrence of Arabia, another biopic about a complex man who wore different personas in different phases of his life.  

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