I'm Not There

Bob Dylan. Many different roads, many different worlds. Impossible to capture the essence of such a multifarious individual (or any individual really) within a film, wherein lies the strength of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There. Haynes takes several events from Dylan's life and weaves them into a fascinating biographical mosaic, challenging, creating, and invigorating different characteristics of Dylan's character (and caricatures), using intertextual, non-linear, subterranean, and heuristic devices to skillfully construct and deconstruct the myth. Different people live different lives at different points throughout their life, throughout their days, and I'm Not There aptly highlights this ontological feature. There are six Dylans, each with a different name, some with a different race or gender, each qualifying a different nuance of the legend, potently examining the potential reality within a fluctuating fantastic frame. At the same time, Haynes's portrait comprehensively analyzes what it means to be biographical, real, historical. Random quotes are interspersed throughout, riddles within conundrums within denotations, and several of them cater to Dylan's uncanny ability to simply chronicle the convoluted vicissitudes of life. Definitely long, definitely complicated, certainly challenging, positively electrifying, in a folksy kind of way, I'm Not There's not one to miss and will inspire new interpretations with each subsequent viewing.