I'm Not There, He said

I'm not sure why this film was made other than it was an homage to Bob Dylan. My confusion comes from the fact that this film should have been made about twenty years from now assuming that Bob and everyone important in the story was dead. Instead we witness an amazing film that depicts Bob's life as told by six separate actors portraying different phases of his life.

We open with young Marcus Carl Franklin, Arthur, playing that part of Dylan's life where he is learning about music and his hero is Woody Guthrie. He master this folk form, but realizes that he is singing about things in the past. His genius is the ability to take the form and move the subject matter into the present.

Which introduces us to the phase named Jack, played be Christian Bale. Jack takes us through the early stardom phase to the abandonment of folk style music and the electric Dylan. This is followed by the mature married Dylan, called Robbie, played by Heath Ledger, who abandons his wife and children in the search for... well Bob never figured that out either.

The truly amazing performance is the International Dylan, Jude, played by Cate Blanchett. She impersonates Dylan without being campy and over the top. She shows us his shyness and at the same time exhibits his iron will in the battle with the press to box himself in and categorize his music.
This film is amazing in it's effort to poetically and artistically examine Dylan's career. I applaud the effort, but I'm confused by the overlapping and lack of continuity. I don't believe a story has to be linear in order to be accessible, but in this case we're experiencing the life of a person who did not live or experience flashbacks as another character. this technique bothered me and distracted the viewer from a great tale of an artist who insisted on being what he is on his own terms.

The difference in this effort is not only in the presentation, but as a I mentioned earlier, the timing of the release. Normally we want our hero's to be mythical. We want to know the good and worthy about them. We don't want to see the cuts and scars unless they are healed and can be shown to be character building. by mounting this story before Dylan is even finished his career is invite the kind of tell all reaction that might show our hero to be human rather than the giant we want him to be. Dylan is not a perfect human, but he is one of the great musicians of our time. And even though he might cringe, he will suffice as the Poet Laureate of his generation. Further, if his music did not inspire change, a charge Dylan leveled at himself, it at least serves to embarrass us into the realization that we haven't got the job done