Visions of Bob Dylan: The Wide-Open Dream of ‘I’m Not There’
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Bryan Wawzenek
Near the end of I’m Not There, Richard Gere says, “I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep, I know for certain I’m somebody else.”
He’s talking about the shifting nature of human identity and, in so doing, speaking from a screenplay written by somebody else (Todd Haynes and Oren Moverman) with lines that are direct quotes from another somebody else (Bob Dylan). And, of course, he’s not Richard Gere. He’s the outlaw Billy the Kid on his way to a new (or past) adventure. And, really, that character isn’t Billy but a version of Bob Dylan—at least in an artistic sense, if not a literal one.
“It’s like you got yesterday, today and tomorrow all in the same room,” Richard-Billy-Bob continues. “There’s no tellin’ what can happen.”
The same could be said for I’m Not There, as relentlessly surprising, insightful, and delightful a movie as I’ve seen in the past quarter-century. Directed and co-written by Todd Haynes, who had already learned a couple hard lessons about profiling music icons on screen, his 2007 film was “inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan” with six different actors playing six different characters in six different stories that play out in six different film styles that are as much a commentary on movies as they are a reflection of Dylan. Visually, it’s a heady mix of Don’t Look Back and No Direction Home, French New Wave and American revisionist westerns, Richard Lester and Sam Peckinpah. Each style and star bears some resemblance to the celebrated musician—or, at least, the personas that Dylan allows us to see.
The Dylan He Is A-Changin’
Bob was moving through a multitude of eras long before Taylor Swift, not to mention Beyoncé, Madonna, and David Bowie. His transformations were at once starker than any of those artists and seemingly more lived-in. His music changed (it’s hard to think of any other artist who created a cultural moment by doing something as simple as picking up an amplified instrument) and so did the way he looked, the way he moved, the way he sounded—a result of age, lifestyle, and affectation.
And as long as Dylan has been changin’, there have been so-called Dylanologists trying to find clues and evidence of the “real” man born Robert Zimmerman. Back in the ’60s, some would even go through his trash to better understand their favorite artist. It’s funny to think that some of these people would likely sneer at teenage Beatlemaniacs grabbing for a lock of Ringo’s hair. Meanwhile, they’re poring over stained papers amidst Dylan’s tin cans and cigarette butts.
Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.
As such, you might think that I’m Not There was made for them, with its sly nods to Dylan’s history, quotes, and rumors. But Haynes discouraged viewing his movie as a “spot the reference” game. It’s like listening to a Girl Talk album just to name the samples (and I say that with a hearty dose of self-implication). While I’m Not There is a rich text, to be sure, it also repudiates such small-minded devotion to someone who is never going to give the obsessed what they truly want.
By way of its half-dozen Dylans starring in their own films that segue in and out of each other with dreamlike ease, the movie is saying that you can’t know Bob Dylan, because, well, you don’t know him. And while you’re parsing for clues, you’re missing an opportunity to engage with the beauty and insight of his work and spend time thinking about how it impacts yourself—someone you might know (at least, hopefully, a little). It’s all there in the title, based on a Basement Tapes chestnut. If you’re looking for Dylan in his lyrics, recordings, interviews, history, biography, or even his trash, he’s not there; he’s gone.
I Ain’t Gonna Play Acoustic No More
And Dylan isn’t special in this respect. Remarkable as an artist, yes, but as a person he’s evolving along like the rest of us. It’s just that because of the value placed on his talents, people have tried to find a way to pin him down. I’m Not There is particularly astute at exploring this. Julianne Moore’s Alice Fabian is a cutting take on Joan Baez in her wistful recounting of Jack Rollins’ (Christian Bale) protest years. Bruce Greenwood’s Kennan Jones tries for a steel-eyed exposé of Cate Blanchett’s Jude Quinn, as if learning a star’s birth name reveals something more true than what is being communicated in their work.
But my favorite I’m Not There scene as it relates to artist progression emphasizes how fruitless it is for fans to bang their heads in frustration over their favorite musician doing something different. Blanchett as Quinn as Dylan has just “gone electric” with “Maggie’s Farm” (and machine guns pointed at the audience as a sledgehammer allegory). The fans rage and pout and kick and scream that he’s just not the same, as if their fandom was transactional and Cate-Jude-Bob owed it to them to stay rooted in the place where his followers felt most comfortable. It’s a wonderful portrayal of “I only like the early stuff” fandom, which Dylan’s folk fans serve as the most extreme example. The camera pans while everyone is ranting and espousing the betrayal. A lone attendee shrugs, “I kinda liked getting blasted out of my skin.” Just because it wasn’t the experience you expected doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. And that doesn’t even begin to address the idea that people think it’s weird for a fellow human being to change.
This isn’t to say that anyone, including Haynes, has the market cornered on the right way to be a fan. Be obsessive. Be devoted. Cover your lockers with pictures and fill your hard drives with bootlegs. After what I’ve just written, I still question why I’m Not There stokes the fires of my creative mind. Do I like it because I get some (if not all) of the references? Do I love this film because of the music? Do you have to like Dylan’s music to enjoy this movie?
I don’t know. I don’t think so because I’m Not There marries clever, clear-eyed send-ups of pop culture, fame, and artistry with such soulful and emotive performances. It’s playful while being intellectual, and best experienced as a dream. In that way, it’s like an album that’s best experienced in the moment. You can always delve into the lyrics in the liner notes later, but being present allows you to be subsumed by the transcendent moments, like Heath Ledger’s Robbie Clark in the diner with Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Claire, unleashing a magnetic charm that belies the brutal facets of his personality. Or the nebbish, snarky, and wise contrarian found in Ben Whishaw’s Arthur Rimbaud (“Never create anything. It will be misinterpreted.”). Or the aloof weariness of Christian Bale’s Jack Rollins who is refreshingly unimpressed with fame and power as far as the dominant culture seems to understand it.
All Aboard the Slow Train Coming
Every Dylan gives a magnificent performance (and Blanchett was rightly heralded for her feline approach to Bob circa ’65-66), but the mind-blowing master stroke of the movie is making protest singer Jack into the latter-day Pastor Jack to reflect Dylan’s conversion to Christianity in the late ’70s. Lesser filmmakers would have split this into yet another Dylan, but Haynes and Moverman found the throughline between Dylan’s righteous protest music of the early ’60s and his righteous religious music at the turn of the ’80s. And Bale sells it with a stoic performance and, as Pastor Jack, a horrific perm.
“I’m Not There is playful while being intellectual, and best experienced as a dream.”
But credit also goes to X’s John Doe, who serves as Bale’s singing voice when he delivers the magnificent “Pressing On,” a performance that supersedes Dylan’s original. Doe’s vocal take doubles down on the deliverance of the lyrics while the country/gospel musical approach builds on the singer’s full-throated commitment. Within the scene in I’m Not There, and beyond it, Doe’s cover is so good that it encouraged this agnostic to explore Dylan’s Christian albums. They were better than I expected… and yet still nowhere as good as this impassioned version of “Pressing On.”
It's something of a miracle that Haynes secured the rights to Dylan’s catalog for his movie (in contrast to the lack of such approval for Velvet Goldmine, which is another story). The soundtrack includes Dylan classics and rarities alongside covers by a murderer’s row of indie rockers. From a credit sequence set to “Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)” to My Morning Jacket’s Jim James wearing Rolling Thunder face paint while belting “Goin’ to Acapulco” to Haynes’s devastating use of “Idiot Wind” during an intimate moment between Ledger’s Robbie and Gainsbourg’s Claire, the director doesn’t waste a note and the performers make sure the moments resonate.
Stuck Inside A Dylan Movie (With the Biopic Blues Again)
There’s a new Dylan movie on the horizon: A Complete Unknown. And sure, Timothée Chalamet is solid casting and writer-director James Mangold has already shown his music biopic talents (he wisely centered Walk the Line’s crucial moments on stage). I’m curious, but ultimately unexcited about it. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t envision any movie capturing the wiliness of Dylan the way I’m Not There does.
Any biopic can wind through the beats of a famous person’s story. And there are plenty of good examples of this. I’m Not There goes beyond mere storytelling to embody Dylan’s work, perspectives, and personas in a way I haven’t experienced in a movie before or since. I’m afraid that anyone else might be paddling against Bob’s stream of consciousness. Haynes and everyone else involved in I’m Not There allowed the stories, the moments, and the music to explode and expand into a wide-open dream.
As the man himself once sang, “I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.”
Bryan Wawzenek is a writer, editor, and a former entertainment journalist who currently works in higher education communications. The only thing he likes better than watching movies or listening to music is writing about them.