I'm Not There

"I'm Not There" is of course a movie that's not all there.  It's missing a
coherent plot, for example, although quite likely, that is what the
director intended.

The film chronicles the life of iconic folk singer and enigmatic rocker,
Bob Dylan.  However, the word ‘chronicles’ has to further defined.
Sometimes a movie will be ‘based’ upon a book or story.  Or sometimes it
will be said to have been suggested by a book, which typically means that
it bears as much resemblance to the original story as James Frey’s memoir
did to his real life.

The average viewer will not know what to make of “I’m Not There”.  Is it at
all representative of Dylan’s actual life?  Since the movie employs six
different actors, ranging from a young black child-actor to a bound-up Cate
Blanchett to an whiskery Richard Gere, all of whom play characters with
names not equal to ‘Bob Dylan’, it’s hard to know what is going on.  Some
of the events are symbolic, some of the events more or less happened, it’s
left as an exercise to the viewer to figure out which is which?

The decision to cast multiple actors to play the same ‘character’ has its
interesting moments.  Cate Blanchet definitely steals the show as a
somewhat effeminate rock star with all the typical rock star problems.
Unfortunately, most of the other actors, and the characters they play,
blend into an irritating soup of sameness.  One exception – Marcus Franklin
as the youthful embodiment of a guitar-playing hustling black-skinned and
southern-twanged Arlo Guthrie – is interesting, if a bit hard to figure.
The other exception – Richard Gere as an hallucinating Billy the Kid figure
– is an outstanding example of miscasting – an acting icon playing a
mythical icon standing in for another musical icon.  All the viewer can say
is, hey that’s Richard Gere and he needs a shave.