Review

I'm Not There. is a strange movie. It's about Bob Dylan. But it's not about Bob Dylan. It features six characters who represent different aspects of the musician's life and work – played by five different actors and one actress. Cate Blanchett steals the largest amount of screentime and her performance is absolutely incredible.

The individual storylines seem to paint six distinctive periods in Dylan's life. The movie starts with Dylan as a young boy hitch-hiking on a railroad car. Christian Bale seemed to represent the singers rise. Heath Ledger followed Dylan's success and touching of the start of difficulties with his celebrity status. Cate Blanchett tackled the media intrusion and questioning of the singers initial passion. For me, the most confusing and least rewarding segment was that played by Richard Gere – although this segment brought the movie full circle with Gere disappearing on a railroad car. The following quote explains the final piece fairly well - "a self-imposed exile from the modern world, reflecting some of Dylan's retreats from the public eye and his lifelong love of traditional music and its outlaw past. The themes of Dylan's country songs and basement recordings." and seems to show the complexity of the entire movie. The movie was tied together with black & white segments featuring sporadic quotes by 'Arthur Rimbaud'.

The movie is full of amazing quotes. Probably the most memorable and representative of the movie is "Never create anything, for it will be misinterpreted. It will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life, and it will never change."

Overall, the movie is pretty difficult to watch, understand and follow but rewards the viewer in visual appeal, performance, direction, editing and individual narrative. I know very little about Bob Dylan and I'm sure fans will get a lot more out of the movie than I did. Browsing the imdb forum for I'm Not There. gives some insight in to the complexity of the movie and I highly recommend reading a few threads if you've seen this movie.