By Armond White

I'm Not There
Directed by Todd Haymes


When Bob Dylan was asked what the name Alias meant, while portraying a Western runt in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, he roguishly improvised: “Alias anything you please.” So did we really need Todd Haynes to layer the Dylan myth with even more obfuscation in I’m Not There? Haynes cast six different actors (four white men, one white woman and one black male child) to impersonate various personalities that Minnesotan Robert Zimmerman has presented throughout his career as “Bob Dylan.” But even back in ’73—before Dylan’s Hurricane Carter campaign, the Rolling Thunder Tour masks, the Christian conversion, the Traveling Wilburys stint, the recent, unstoppable sage-oracle/songcrafter phase—Peckinpah had already, definitively, indicated Dylan’s penchant to manipulate public speculation about his persona. Pat Garrett’s Western historical context had sufficient folkloric resonance; Dylan’s cameo role was gnomic yet graspable—not the inscrutable deity Haynes creates.

In this shrewdly calculated piece of Dylanolatry, Haynes suckers Dylan fans and cineastes alike who pride themselves on insider-knowledge. The con starts with his iconic Six: Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody (the young apprentice Dylan); Christian Bale as Jack (the upstart folk star); Ben Whishaw as Arthur (the introspective poet); Cate Blanchett as Jude (the 1960s pop star); Heath Ledger as Robbie (the disenchanted rock veteran) and Richard Gere as Billy (the shaman and American archivist). Haynes presents these vaguely chronological personae in different film styles ranging from nostalgic Americana, surrealism, cinema verité to a parody of Fellini’s 8 1/2.

Altogether, I’m Not There is a presumptuous act of reverse hubris. No one should expect to be entertained by the story it doesn’t tell or the blind alleys it revisits. After all, it’s not about Bob Dylan, it’s about Todd Haynes’ own art-confusion, refracted through the notoriety of Bob Dylan—just as Haynes pilfered the lives of ’70s Glam Rock icons in the atrocious Velvet Goldmine merely to glorify himself. No other pop buff has turned himself into such an idiot savant. Peter Bogdanovich’s early-career movie-love was the start of what became a humane directorial vision, but Haynes has taken on the mantle of artiste—another symptom of the Tarantino era that misconstrues cinephilia with intelligence. There’s never been a dumber, more inept series of “informed” homages than Haynes’ Safe and Far From Heaven, which trashed Antonioni and Douglas Sirk in the attempt to outsmart them.

Haynes’ real agenda is to re-write cultural history as meaningless folly. That’s the essence of his covetous hero-worship. Dylan’s the latest show-pig on the chopping block. Haynes hasn’t made a movie about regular people or the real world; his motivation is basically sycophantic. I’m Not There becomes one more pollutant in the smog of celebrity-worship that today’s media encourages us to inhale.

Nothing Dylan actually did in any of his willful phases was this look-at-me arrogant without at least being musical. Yet Haynes’ film lacks cinematic-entertainment value; he still has that Brown University film school conceitedness. His weak, 8 1/2-style B&W dolly shots of high-lifers don’t deconstruct cultural totems but simply looks like student-film ineptitude. This postmodern mishmash reveals nothing about Dylan’s passion or cultural impact. A strategy of puns (Dylan looking at a crucifix and saying “How does it feel?” or dubbing a girlfriend’s act of bravery as “Just like a woman”) is more hunch-nudge smart-ass than any of Julie Taymor’s Beatles puns in Across the Universe. Both movies suggest a damnable compulsion to get the ’60s wrong.

But Haynes doesn’t bother reading the culture by relating Dylan’s music and biography to social history; it’s all just Cinema Studies showing-off. Velvet Goldmine proved Haynes has no feel for how music is performed—besides, that’s too banal for a thesis movie. Trouble is, Haynes stole his multi-character thesis from Todd Solondz’s fascinating but critically panned Palindromes where different actors representing diverse social types embodied an average shy girl’s experience. Solondz’s universalizing thesis had a humanistic basis. Haynes wants the opposite alienating effect: illogically casting a black kid as the “faker” Dylan/Woody. (He dines with a Southern black family and the stereotypical wise Mammy advises “Sing yo’ own time, chile.”)

Haynes’ many Dylans foolishly suggest that WE ARE ALL DYLAN. A hired flack couldn’t be more obsequious. Plus, it’s sheer hell watching another Cate Blanchett character assassination. Her idea of Dylan is to dither, pivot and flutter her fingers while wearing a Harpo Marx wig. (Adam Sandler’s Dylanite characterization in Reign Over Me at least updated the Dylan myth.) Blanchett is in a Culture Vulture contest with Nicole Kidman to see who can appear in the most pretentious art movies.

I’m Not There doesn’t justify Dylan-worship or take us beyond it. Scorsese similarly failed in the documentary No Direction Home, refusing to ask Dylan pointed questions on art-marking, religion or ethnicity, just to sustain the godlike mystique. For a filmmaker who professes to interrogate political, sexual and racial conventions, Haynes shows an alarming propensity to recapitulate the status quo. I’m Not There has epic length, but it’s one bad idea after another. Despite quoting Dylan’s maxim, “American music comes from the bottom up,” this academic conceit comes from the top down. It lacks what makes Dylan undeniable: the common touch. Ivory tower, celebrity worshipping Haynes is the wrong Todd.