As even minor Dylanologists know, his name, it is nothing and his age, it means less. You read the chugging, exhilarating prose of Chronicles Vol. 1 only to discover that Mr. Zimmerman is having fun with you again. Spend a lifetime with the lyrics and you’ll find nothing but charming lies about movie stars and the Mayflower and everything under the sun. It’s not that there’s another side to Bob Dylan. It’s that there’s always another side to Bob Dylan. And another. And another.
How can one dramatise the life and times of such a mercurial entity? It’s inconceivable, or so you would think until you’ve seen Todd Haynes’ magnificent new film. An impossibly arch talent, Mr. Haynes has done more to bring experimental ideas into multiplexes than Davids Lynch and Cronenberg combined. Having tinkered triumphantly with the all-American melodrama (Far From Heaven) and the AIDS crisis (Poison, Safe), I’m Not There sees the director at his most out there and most immediately accessible. His film is a paradox and a riddle. It’s no biopic yet it’s the only possible biopic in the circumstances. Sound like anyone we know?
We encounter not one Dylan, but an entire horde. Christian Bale is the darling of Greenwich Village, the Dylan of certainty who embraces purist notions of folk and later Christianity. Ben Whishaw is dandy Dylan, a cool Rimbaud quoting study in monochrome. Heath Ledger is Dylan the broken lover with Charlotte Gainsbourg as his Sarah. Most colourful of all is Richard Gere, a weird old-timer rattling around a town that might be twinned with the set of Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid; a circus detour somewhere between The Basement and Highway 61.
Being a clever sort of chap, Mr. Haynes uses anti-casting to convey The Great Bob at his most provocative. Marcus Carl Franklin, an excellent 14-year-old black actor, is the Woody-worshipping, train-hopping hobo kid who looks and sounds like the great depression is in full swing. Cate Blanchett, meanwhile, is electric Dylan, the skinny singer who upset the rigid minded folks at Newport. Her presence is no mere stunt. It’s a phenomenon.
Fans will treasure every moment as tarantulas creep across the screen or The Beatles show up for a ten-second Richard Lester parody. The preterite meanwhile can gorge on the sheer energy and mischief of Mr. Haynes’s vision. Playful, goofy and compelling, this is the best film of 2007 by a vagabond mile.