If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues

Happy 63rd Birthday, EC! See you in May when you come to Tampa.

No particular place to go

This isn't at all film related, but I thought I'd relay this to whoever's out there.

As I was driving to work this morning, the radio reported the weather forecast for the day, after which the announcer told us that "'Weather' is brought to you by Central Florida Toyota [or some other car dealership]." I had no idea! I'd like to take this opportunity to personally thank Central Florida Toyota [or some other car dealership] for giving us the gift of weather. And here I was blaming God for all the hot and muggy that is Central Florida.

Speaking of which (not really), the Florida Film Festival 2008 officially starts tonight! A woo-hoo!

Tipitina, tra la la

"What is it about movies that explains
their amazing hold over the human mind?"

-- Colin McGinn, The Power of Movies


I've just finished reading an advanced reading copy of a new memoir by novelist David Gilmour called The Film Club. It chronicles the the relationship between Gilmour and his son, Jesse, who is so bad at school his father gives him the option of dropping out altogether and not even have to pay rent or for food. But he has to agree to one condition: watch three films with his father a week and discuss. The book is more a love letter to Jesse and the relationship between dads and sons than it is to film, but there are some choice passages in it that really get what it is to love movies. Not to like them, but to love them, and what it says about those who do:

Picking movies for people is a risky business. In a way it's as revealing
as writing someone a letter. It shows how you think, it shows what moves you,
sometimes it can even show how you think the world sees you.

People often say that you can define a person by what they say or by what they do or by what they believe in or their values. But I like to take a different approach. I like to define a person by their taste, by the things they like. Because, as Gilmour alludes to in the above quote, a list of things you like says as much about you as it does about those things. That goes for all art, including movies.

And so I propose a little activity. For those of you who read this and know me personally (which is almost all of you), know I work at a library (which is, again, most of you who also do). Recently we had a StoryCorps mobile booth parked outside our library, which allowed anyone on the street to tell their story, whatever it is.

What I want is for you, yes you, to tell me your story, but not in the traditional sense. I want you to tell it through the movies you love. What are the five movies that come closest to defining who and what you are? These are not the five movies you'd want if you were stranded on a deserted island. This is not a Sight & Sound list either--I don't want to know what you think the five greatest movies ever are (well, I do, but not for the purpose of this). And I'm not even asking for your five favorite movies, that's still a little different. I want the collection of movies that in some way tell your personal story. And it doesn't have to be obvious, you can be creative. If you work in a library, you don't have pick a movie about librarians or writers or books. If you're a doctor, you don't have to pick a movie set in a hospital. And you don't have to pick five... pick two, even one. I'm just curious as to what movies hit you on a personal level; what movies mean so much to you it becomes an extension of you, a part of you.

Here's one of mine, to start the discussion:

Sunset Boulevard may be Billy Wilder's best movie, Some Like it Hot may be his funniest, and Woody Allen was once quoted as saying that Double Indemnity is probably the best movie ever made. But for me The Apartment resonates the most personally. There is a scene--a moment actually--that is as good as any in Wilder's career. (I'll try to be slightly evasive as to avoid major spoilers.) It comes at about the midpoint in the movie when C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) opens a compact and sees that the mirror is broken. In a moment, his whole world has turned on a dime. Everything he knows about someone has been turned on its head. "Some people take and some people get took," a character says to him later in the film. And what I love is that the more the two leads describe their own lives, the more they are describing each other. Pain and personal anguish is as universal as it is specific and I don't know if there's a better movie I've seen in capturing that.

Okay, it's your turn... you'll get the rest when I hear some of yours.

Oh, and The Film Club comes out May 6.

Eat it up

The end of winter/early spring time of year is often a dreaded one for cinephiles. After Hollywood indulges in its annual self-lovemaking at the Oscars, there is a bit of a post-coital letdown where theaters are awash with usually forgettable crap. Instead of giving us films to snuggle with, the industry leaves us with the one-night stand, a series of meaningless treks to the cinema, allowing us nothing but to curb our fix. (Okay, maybe I'm overdoing it with the sex analogy, but I like it and am starting to feel a little bit aroused.)

Thankfully, though, the Florida Film Festival starts in three weeks. I'd say that the festival brings a blast of sun, warming us up from the cold of winter, but it's Orlando and, let's face it, it hasn't been cold here since around 10,000 B.C.

For many, the big name celebrities are the highlight. This year Anthony Bourdain and Jennifer Tilly will be here. Bourdain will be discussing--obviously--food and it seems FFF has been increasingly intent on introducing food and wine as a major theme in the past couple of years, possibly because they have been sponsored by various food and drink businesses and also perhaps because the main theater is the Enzian Theater, which is a dinner theater. Tilly will be here for a screening of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, a film in which she co-starred. Last year, Oscar-winning director Peter Bogdanovich was a guest for a special screening of Paper Moon and I could've listened to him talk for days. But for me, the real thrill (besides the range of movies) is seeing and listening to the unknown independent directors, producers, and actors (although I missed seeing last year's opening night guest Judy Greer and thus missed my opportunity to ask her to marry me). For many of the films here, the festival circuit is as far as they'll get and it's both inspiring and a bit sobering hearing the hardships and triumphs of these filmmakers.

I'm taking my vacation during the festival, so I will see as many movies as I can possibly see without passing out and I will try to keep a sort of log for each day I attend.

There are a few movies I already know I want to see: Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, David Gordon Green's Snow Angels, and the low-budget indie (redundant?) August Evening. What these and other films hold I can't say and that's what is exciting about festivals. I know that after the 10 days are up there will be a movie (or two, or three) that I will love. What's great is that I have no idea which ones they will be.

Give me one kiss and I'll be happy

The Dave Clark Five will be inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in a couple of weeks. Sadly, songwriter and lead singer Mike Smith passed away today at 64. R.I.P.

Brown paper packages tied up with string

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Now normally you'd read a year-end wrap up like this sometime by the end of December or the beginning of the new year, but late-year releases sometimes don't come to Orlando until a couple of months later, so I have a self-imposed deadline of Oscar night to compile my top-10 list. (Thought: what if writer's strike had continued and the Academy Awards were cancelled?)

A survey of film (and of film criticism) this past year will likely lead you to believe that this was a year dominated by stories of men, that the ooze of testosterone permeated every cinematic offering. And, to be sure, a good number of films last year did in some ways explore territory that has been heretofore traditionally masculine. But some of 2007's best movies feature actresses in roles that don't exist simply in the periphery, but are integral to the film's success. From The Big Bad Swim to L'Iceberg, from Enchanted to The Golden Compass, from Atonement to Grindhouse, women have been portrayed in a surprisingly wide range of ways in movies last year and in no less than seven of my top 10 films this year does a woman (or women) exist at the center of the story, or are at the very at least on par with their male counterpart(s)--four of which are written and directed by a woman.

But before I get to those, let me first acknowledge a number of films (eleven to be exact) that just missed making the list. In any other year or, frankly, if I was in a different mood while writing this, these might have made the top 10. But alas, this is the 11-way tie for 11th place:

Documentaries often get lost in the shuffle of the more-heralded fiction films, but three of them in particular stood out to me. For time immemorial it is almost certain that the current political climate in this country will be defined by our presence in Iraq and while certain films fictionalize the situation there or more obliquely reference it in allegorical terms, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight tackles it directly and matter-of-factly. Without bias or partisanship, the film in no uncertain terms described the idiocy and incompetence that led to our involvement in the Middle East this time around and, as the title indicates, who knows when it'll be over. Deep Water and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters are two vastly different documentaries, but at the heart of each of them is how ego and ambition can drive the male half of our species to extremes most of us (men and women) would consider absolute ridiculous and at times downright dangerous.

Not a documentary, but a film that proceeds like one and based on true events, Zodiac also examines the dangerous obsessions of men, as it follows three characters in search of San Francisco's notorious Zodiac killer. Like No Country For Old Men (see below), ultimately the violence of the film is ignored for what that violence leaves in its wake and the questions it almost always leaves unanswered.

The spectre of war, violence, and internal national conflict is of course not unique to us, they exist all over the world. Sometimes the best movies about a country's past are the ones that weave the arc of national history with their character's own personal history. No more engaging is this the case than in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Marjane (the character) is herself a dynamo and, like the rest of her family, tough as nails as they have to endure the daily struggle of tyranny and bombings in their native Iran. She is flawed and makes mistakes, but like the country that gave her life, her parents and grandmother know she is worth the struggle. Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley echoes a lot of America's history though it takes place during the Irish rebellion against Britain and its subsequent civil war. Most striking is how often that those who rise up against tyranny in many ways enforce their own tyranny, a hypocrisy that perpetuates a violence that it supposes to quell. In pre-1989 East Berlin, The Lives of Others is more hopeful in its appraisal of oppression. Tragedies and betrayals occur (as they must often do in those situations) but the ultimate empathy of people for others is the only ammo against these types of regimes. Hey, the wall did come down eventually!

Superbad may only be the second-best Judd Apatow-produced film of 2007, but maybe that's why Entertainment Weekly recently named him the smartest person in Hollywood. How is this one any different from any of the other stupid, sophomoric, raunchy comedies that come through the pipeline every year? Because this one understands the insecurity and desperation most 17-year-old boys go through when it comes to sex, girls, partying, alcohol, and friendships that get severed simply because people grow up. Because it is probably the most laugh-out-loud and consistently funny movie of last year. Because Seth Rogen and Bill Hader are the coolest cops ever. Because Martha MacIsaac plays the best drunk. Oh yeah, and because of what's-his-name, that nerdy Irish R&B singer/Hawaiian organ donor.

Why are the smartest people always the most messed up? I don't know 'cos I'm too messed up myself (haha!), but the characters in The Savages and Margot at the Wedding show that, despite some of their best intentions, people are just sometimes bad. The brother and sister Savages may have worked out some of their issues by the end and redeemed themselves, but Margot and the rest of the adults at the wedding are so evil and vindictive throughout that they make the adults in The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach's previous film) look tame by comparison.

The brilliance of Lasse Hallström's The Hoax is not just how Richard Gere's Clifford Irving plays with the truth, but how the film does so as well. It's a kind of cat-and-mouse game the film plays with us and part of the fun is wondering who's more full of it--Irving or the movie. This is a film that is based on a story, not necessarily a true one.
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And now,

These are a few of my favorite things:


10. 2 Days in Paris

The best Woody Allen movie not made by Woody Allen since When Harry Met Sally and one of the most honest portrayals of two people, not still in their early 20s, but not yet middle-aged, attempting to navigate the difficult terrain of a relationship while knowing all too well that each of them has their share of emotional baggage.

9. Day Night Day Night

Without preaching or proselytizing, without pointing the finger or passing judgment, Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night is weirdly perhaps the most apolitical political film of the year. Ignoring everything about the girl's background and reasons for accepting a mission as a suicide bomber (it's even difficult to tell her ethnicity from simply her looks or accent) and focusing on her mundane minute-by-minute activities, the film places us firmly in the present and turns her into an everywoman, a sobering realization of the current climate.

8. Knocked Up

Superbad's older, only slightly wiser big brother is a sort of rom-com in reverse. Sex and pregnancy first, getting to know each other and romance second. Like The 40-Year-Old Virgin before it, Judd Apatow's follow-up generously mixes the raunchy elements with the sweeter ones. But this one actually delves deeper into the differences between the sexes and the sacrifices inevitable in relationships. The "B" storyline between Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann's characters are almost good enough to carry a film on its own, in no small part due to Mann's (Apatow's real-life wife) affecting performance. Apatow's regular cast of characters only get better with each production and they're like a great jazz band who've been together for years, riffing twos and fours off each other seemingly without even thinking.

7. Into the Wild

The romance of freedom and independence--real freedom, not imagined or idealized-- is only tempered by the grave and unfair fact that it probably doesn't really exist. That's perhaps the most moving thing I walked away with after watching Sean Penn's film about the life of Christopher McCandless, a life that is at once inspiring, sad, uplifting, and tragic. It's also a testament--among the many movies, pieces of literature, etc. that would, albeit sometimes rightfully, claim otherwise--to the beauty of this country. Not only beautiful terrain and vast landscapes, but the people. The America as defined by Americans. Sean Penn may be criticized by many "patriots" as being himself unpatriotic, but his movie celebrates us all more than most movies ever try to do.

6. Away From Her

Julie Christie duly gets a lion's share of credit for her performance as a woman suffering from Alzheimer's, but months after seeing the film, it is Gordon Pinsent's performance as her longtime husband that resonates with me. Sarah Polley's debut screenplay (adapted from Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain") is deft at allowing us to empathize with Pinsent as he maneuvers a life separated from his wife while not letting him off the hook for past deeds done. The movie is as quiet and internal as one can be without sacrificing true drama.

5. Waitress

It would be difficult to watch this film without a tinge of sadness knowing the fate of director Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered before it debuted at Sundance. It would also be easy to dismiss enthusiasm for the movie as an overreaction to her death. But all I know is that this is the movie that might have made me feel the happiest after seeing it and that Keri Russell's lead performance is probably my favorite of the past year. The scenes between her and Nathan Fillion as Dr. Pomatter play like 40s screwball, like this generation's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. It's also, underneath all its great warmth and humor, a sort of feminist manifesto, showing that a woman doesn't have to define herself by the man whose arm she's on, whether it be her abusive husband or even her all-around good guy doctor. Oh yeah, and all those great pies!

4. There Will Be Blood

The best thing to wash down a great pie with is probably a milkshake! "I drink it up!" as Daniel Plainview would say. The grander theme of the movie--the dialectical relationship between religion and money, God and commerce--is balanced by the focused portrayal of one man's descent into madness. The movie's ambition is equaled only by its main character and it devours him and all that dare enter his path. I know a whole lotta people had issues with the film's insane finale, but I think it's perfect in galvanizing both the larger matters of the film with the smaller, more internal ones of Plainview.

3. No Country For Old Men

After seeing the Coen Bros.' latest film, a very close friend of mine wrote to me: "No wasted shots, no wasted dialogue." And she couldn't have hit it more on the nose. The film is as coolly efficient as Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is a killer. It's probably the most technically accomplished movie of the year, but saying that would be to diminish its overall accomplishments. Eschewing the violence that occurs earlier in the film, NCFOM becomes a meditation on a world that, like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), is always recovering, always one step behind.

2. I'm Not There

Probably the musical biopic that most captures the spirit of its subject since A Hard Day's Night, I'm Not There knows no bounds in its approach to Dylan--the artist, the man, the celebrity, and everything else. For all its intellectualizing, it does also have an emotional center, both in the elegiac section with Richard Gere as Billy the Kid, and more notably the bittersweet romance between Heath Ledger as actor Robbie Clark and Charlotte Gainsbourg's Claire. From their first meeting in a Parisian cafe, to their courtship and marriage, to their eventual divorce, this is the episode of the film that is filled with the most joy and also aches with the most pain.

1. Once

A man and a woman (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) are in a music shop, she sits down at a piano, he next to her with his guitar. He's written a song and asks her if she'd try playing it with him. Note by note, he teaches her the melody, while she reads the words on his notebook. Four minutes and one song later, we know everything we need to know about these two. Surely, there are incidental things they'll learn about each other--a kid on her end, a cheating ex-lover on his--but something as simple as the music they share is enough for the film to immerse us in their universe. Everything about this movie is right, every song wonderful. No two characters did I feel more for, no two people did I care as much about what happened to them.

I debated for a long time which I thought was the best movie last year, Once or I'm Not There. In the end these two people, whose names I don't even know (they're just "guy" and "girl" in the credits), were the two best friends I had in all my treks to the cinema in 2007. Some of my favorite movies often have the best endings--a whisper between friends in my #1 movie of 2003, a sunrise and a tapping quarter at the end of my favorite movie of 2005. Once is no different. It ends with a song of course and a crane shot outside a window with someone directly looking into the camera as a sort of goodbye. And as the camera pulls out into the sky we say goodbye as well as we float away. I first saw this movie last summer and I still don't think I've landed.

In an act of pure serendipity, Hansard and Irglová were asked to do a song on the soundtrack of another movie. It just so happens to be a Bob Dylan one called I'm Not There! How 'bout them apples.

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Liked some of these movies? Hated them? What were your favorite movies this year? Seriously, I wanna hear it. Comment away!

Little by Little

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For those clamoring for me to post more often (and you know who you are!), instead of doing a more thorough interrogation of some of the movies I've screened recently, I will instead do a quick, little mini-review of a few titles of interest. (And of course I'm willing to write more if anybody wants to engage in a discussion of any of these movies.)

La Vie en Rose: Yet another bloated musical biopic. It is often someone will say that real life is more entertaining and dramatic than fiction. I believe those someones are probably the idiots that also say that a movie is never as good as the book. Coming only a couple of years after the likes of Ray and Walk the Line, La Vie en Rose changes nothing of the genre, only inserts a different musical legend (legendary French singer Edith Piaf). In a year when both I'm Not There and Walk Hard were released, you'd think people would grow tired of this type of movie by now. If Dewey Cox were still alive, I imagine he'd try to cut the Gallic crooner in half.

Deep Water: It is often someone will say that real life is more entertaining and dramatic than fiction. Okay, in this case they may be right. One of the most stirring and involving documentaries of the past year revisits the 1968 competition which pitted nine men in a non-stop boat race to circumnavigate the globe. Focusing on one sailor in particular, Donald Crowhurst, the film is a meditation on ego and loneliness and the depths of desperation it can create in a human being. More than that, Deep Water also subtly (and sublimely) examines the things men do (because inevitably they must--if for no one else but themselves), while the ebbs and flows of their tragedies and triumphs leave their lives (and responsibilities) at home on the couch, watching and waiting.

27 Dresses: I know the topic of Katherine Heigl bad-mouthing Knocked Up for being sexist has been talked about at length for while now, but seriously, where does she get off? It's movies like 27 Dresses and the just-as-ridiculous Because I Said So, in which the only goal a woman should have in life is to get hitched that make movies like Waitress and The Big Bad Swim all the more important. It's a shame too because as it turns out James Marsden shows, as he did in Enchanted, that he's got the chops to be a real leading man.

The Savages: In the same way the earlier Away From Her dealt with the onset of Alzheimer's, The Savages deals with the onset of dementia. What's curious about both is that each examine the illnesses from the observer, from the perspective of the loved ones who have to manage the situation. And in a way I guess it would be difficult to do it any other fashion, seeing as it would be quite difficult to truly understand what's going on inside the head of the person who's actually suffering the disease. But the arrival of their father's disease force the two overgrown children, Jon and Wendy, to finally grow up and the tenuous sibling rivalry that surfaces as a result is both painful and painfully funny. Two great performances by the always great Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

L'Iceberg: There are a lot of movies these days that work at subverting a particular genre's conventions, or at the very least working as an homage withing that specific framework. Often they are the more clearly defined genre's such as the western or film noir. But the Belgian film L'Iceberg works within the rich, but nowadays almost instinct world of silent comedy. Like the works of Jacques Tati in the 50s and 60s, the film does have ambient sound and minimal dialogue, but it exists almost purely in the physical and visual. Like most silent comedies, even the works of the greats like Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, when the gags fall flat, the film suffers along with it. But when they connect, they're as funny as anything you will see on screen. Like Chaplin did, the directors simply keep the frame still, letting the actors and the action do all the work within the camera's proscenium.

There Will Be Blood: Of all the movies here, this certainly warrants the most consideration, but I am aiming for brevity here, so we'll see how this goes. Based loosely on Upton Sinclair's Oil!, the film follows one man's desire to bring the industry of black gold to the masses, running over anyone and anything that gets in his way--family and friends included. At the center of the film is a chewy, over-the-top (in a good way) performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. In a way it's the typical story of the American Dream and the ambition displayed by Daniel Plainview (Lewis) is matched only by the film's ambition. The film is also the story of America--the strange bedfellows of big business and religion and the way it has shaped this nation both for good and for evil.


Quick note: as the Oscars are coming up soon, I will (finally!) post my year-end review and top 10 for those who are interested (again, you know who you are!).

A girl, a bomb, a backpack, and a city.

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That is about as comprehensive a pure description you are likely to find about Julia Loktev's spare, but thoroughly riveting Day Night Day Night. The film really is simply about two days and nights (hence the title) about a 19-year-old suicide bomber who walks around New York with a loaded backpack. And at the center of it is a performance of incredible power and bravery by Luisa Williams.

Structurally, the film is divided into two very distinct halves. The first takes place almost entirely in a stark motel room in which the girl (unnamed in the film, referred to only as "she" in the credits) dutifully awaits her instructions from the men who have apparently tapped her for this suicide mission. The entire section proceeds methodically. Every frame is carefully composed--usually at right angles, nearly all medium or medium close-ups, and when there are multiple characters, always a two-shot, never a standard shot-reverse shot.

The plot in this section (if we can call it that) varies between the men training or preparing her for her eventual suicide or her idly waiting in the room for them to show up--clipping her toenails, taking a bath, or just laying on the floor. There is a scene in which the men try to shoot a pre-suicide video of the girl holding a gun and reading from a script (something we may be all too familiar with nowadays). But as they try different backdrops, fit her with different clothes and tell her to hold the gun in a different way, nothing seems to work. It's comical in a way, if it wasn't so scary. And all the while all you see is the girl through the video lens, the empty vessel, the Eliza Doolittle to the multiple Henry Higgins in a type of extremist, psychotic perversion of "Pygmalion".

The second section takes place entirely on the streets of New York City. Like the first half, the second focuses mainly on incidental moments. In the first it was washing her face or brushing her teeth; here it's buying pretzels, playing with a toy dog she finds outside a street vendor, or just walking and eating an apple. But where the mise en scène at the beginning was precise, the entire visual approach outside is haphazard and indiscriminate. Where one is still, the other is shaky and hand-held.

What she does with the bomb I won't dare reveal, but in some ways that's not the point. The point in many ways is her fractured psychological state. The quiet, mathematical visual style mimics the plodding, repetitive narrative of the men steadily and systematically preparing her for the next day. The shaky camera and choppy editing is sometimes as visually overwhelming as the city, the people, and the gravity of the situation is to her.

The narrative emptiness, for lack of a better term, is something I've started to notice in a particular kind of new independent American cinema and something I find particularly effective in this movie. The movie, as I've alluded to, focuses--in the midst of this most serious event the girl intends to undertake--on the most mundane, the most banal moments of her life. These moments, unconventionally, don't exist necessarily to explain something in these characters lives or to push the plot forward in some way. They just exist, as in life. Effectively, then, the film draws you into their lives. It is to me most closely linked to cinema-vérité, Italian Neorealism of the postwar era or even some of the contemporary film coming out of eastern Europe, especially Romania--more so than, say, Dogme 95 or another strain of current independent American cinema, "mumblecore" (though I think similarities do exist between them).

The most recent movie Day Night Day Night reminds me of is Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, another movie that gains its power from the ordinary--not from the extremes, but from the banality of the grind of everyday life. For these singular moments are not mundane to these characters, they mean something. It is their life, after all. And that means everything.






Day Night Day Night (dir: Julia Loktev; running time: 94 m)

New Math

Clapton + Dylan = Awesome

In honor of one of the only two or three books I've finished this year and one of the best movies I've seen this year. Watch and enjoy!

You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal...

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If Pulp Fiction is "three stories about one story," then Todd Haynes's I'm Not There ups the narrative ante, telling six stories about one story. The one story being the life, art, and maybe more accurately the enigma that is Bob Dylan. And in each of the six stories, a different actor--Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Heath Ledger--plays Dylan... or a character based on him... or like him... or something like that. If I sound a little confused, then maybe I am, but confused in the best way. In the way a great piece of art (a book, a song, in this case a film) can push and pull you, or maybe tug and shove; in the way a melange of competing images, sounds, and ideas can leave you in an emotional and intellectual tumult and yet can adhere to one (well, actually two) vision(s); in the way, after already two great films have been made about the de facto poet laureate of America's greatest popular art, that remarkably another great one can be made as original and different as the subject himself.

Each of the six stories tackles a different and specific phase of Dylan's life and career and, though only tangentially do any of the six intertwine, they can certainly be said to be linked thematically. And that each of the six stories are embodied by six very different actors perfectly captures the breadth of who Dylan is, the competing personalities that have defined him throughout his career: the poet, preacher, actor, rock star, troubadour, figurehead, cowboy, hermit, husband, father... and on and on. I have the feeling, if he wanted to, Haynes could've used a lot more actors.

Stylistically as well, Haynes uses a variety of approaches, not only among the segments but within them also. No more is this the case in the episode featuring Blanchett. In it she plays a character named Jude Quinn, which is essentially Dylan at his most iconic. It begins with the most notorious moment in Dylan's career: the moment he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. (Well, it's actually when Quinn went electric, but you know what I mean.) Consequently it takes us through the period in which he emerged from a folk hero to fully-fledged rock superstar and for most of it the film has the look and feel of D.A. Pennebaker's equally iconic documentary of Dylan during that period, Don't Look Back.

But other parts of the Blanchett/Quinn segment takes both its visual and narrative cues from the work of Fellini, more specifially La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. The former can be said to be the last of his neorealist work, moving toward an almost full-blown surrealism in the latter that would dominate the second half of Fellini's career. From the mania of the media and the superficiality of celebrity to the cartoonish closeups and the mysterious Coco, the episode acts as a semi-homage to the critical point in Fellini's oeuvre, the hinge around which he changed the trajectory of his work.

And to me that's the most interesting thing about I'm Not There at large: the mashup of styles, the pastiche of influence. The entire film works as a collision of style, existing at the nexus between documentary and the avant-garde; and in doing so, shatters every notion of the traditional biopic. The cutting back-and-forth among the six different parts (featuring six different actors) only serves to blur things even more. As I've already suggested, none of these characters are even named Bob Dylan (or Robert Zimmerman) and three of the characters are named after other historical figures: poet Arthur Rimbaud, folk singer--and Dylan hero--Woody Guthrie, and Billy the Kid. Part of the implication here is that in the same way a reading of I'm Not There would have to include the acknowledgment of the various styles and influences from which it is drawing, an understanding of Dylan's life can only come from at least a recognition of the people and places that inspired him.

But the conflicting styles and shifting narratives lead also to conflicting results. On one hand, the various characters don't tie our perception down to just one monolithic view of Dylan, but a richer range of views that wouldn't be available in a more linear and anecdotal structure of the standard biopic. On the other hand, though, the helter skelter style and tone can also distance us from really getting into each story, nudging us past it and into a different direction. It reminds me a bit of Citizen Kane, when Thompson finally comes to realize that whatever Rosebud was, it really wouldn't have explained anything about the man himself. Haynes is essentially making the same comment: the search for the answers just leads to more questions; the more we think we know about him, the further we really are. In the end, he's really just not there.



I'm Not There (dir: Todd Haynes; running time 135 minutes)