I'm Not There

NEW YORK (CNS) -- As straightforward biography, "No Direction Home," Martin's Scorsese's fine documentary on the early career of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, which aired in 2006 on PBS, still takes the prize.

The latest Dylan bio, "I'm Not There" (Weinstein), is more an artsy, impressionistic portrait.

The film, from co-writer (with Oren Moverman) and director Todd Haynes, does have the interesting conceit of several top actors playing different aspects of his multifaceted character, none actually called Bob Dylan. The script takes its cues from incidents in Dylan's life over the decades as well as thematic material from his songs.

For starters, there's a young black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) who calls himself Woody Guthrie after his idol, and rides the rails like a Depression-era hobo. Then he's Jack (Christian Bale), a Greenwich Village folksinger. We see him interviewed in the persona of an admirer of French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud also called Arthur (Ben Whishaw).

Most engrossing are the sequences where the I'm-not-Dylan character drops the acoustic style that brought him to prominence and reinvents him as plugged-in electric singer Jude (Cate Blanchett), much to the disparagement of fans who accuse him of selling out.

As Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor, he romances French painter Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and fathers two children with her.

Then he's Pentecostal Christian Pastor Jack (Bale again) -- Dylan did undergo conversion, if not actually becoming a cleric -- and finally, in the most perplexing sequence, loner and "outlaw" Billy (Richard Gere), partly a nod to Dylan's appearance in Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid."

Since Haynes eschews conventional biography, the film does seem to require some knowledge of Dylan's history for full appreciation. And with everyone symbolizing different aspects of the Dylan persona, it's difficult to muster much emotional connection.

On the plus side, there's a fine earful of Dylan songs (sung by him and others) and some interesting lead performances (especially from Blanchett, who does a surprisingly plausible Dylan impersonation), along with smaller parts essayed by Julianne Moore as a folksinger with whom he becomes romantically involved, Michelle Williams as an Andy Warhol model, David Cross as Allen Ginsberg, and Bruce Greenwood as a journalist questioning Jude, and who later turns up as Pat Garrett in the Western scenes.

The 135-minute film -- and its stars -- never quite lose your attention, but ultimately "I'm Not There" emerges as a clever, perhaps too clever, cinematic curiosity.

The film contains rough language and profanity, crass expressions, brief partial male and upper-female nudity, a nongraphic sexual encounter and drug use. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops