Rock biopic I'm Not There shows Bob Dylan's many sides by having many actors - including Cate Blanchett and the late Heath Ledger - portray the elusive music legend. Helen Barlow reports
KEY POINTS:
If you were to ask Bob Dylan what his life and songs were about he would struggle to answer. If you try to seek an answer via his songs, you would perhaps go through the various stages of his music, beginning with the strong influence of folk pioneer Woody Guthrie, pass through his folk revival and electric stages and maybe ponder the effect of his motorcycle accident and, of course, his many women.
Todd Haynes, writer-director of I'm Not There (the title is based on an obscure Dylan track) has done just that, but in the most unusual of ways.
He decided that Dylan's life could be divided up into seven characters, which he overlaps throughout his 135-minute film.
"I felt that the film deserved to be treated with the unique wildness and strangeness that I really believe was Dylan's." says Haynes. "So many people become so beloved and so famous and part of the canon that you can't recognise the risks that they took any more, or how radical they were. I wanted to do Dylan justice, not put his life into a preformed package with a beginning, middle and end. You want to find a shape that's unique to that person's art, to what they did and the period that they came from."
Weird and wild as it is, Dylan liked the concept and gave Haynes the rarest of gifts: the rights to use his music in the film, both his own versions and many covers.
"I still really can't believe it, given who he is and how ornery he can be and how much he doesn't want people to continue to do this to him," Haynes said.
Haynes, whose films include Safe and Velvet Goldmine, was a Dylan fan as a teen but had not listened much to his music again until his late 30s, when he began the screenplay for his 2002 drama Far From Heaven.
As he burrowed back into the music, Haynes began reading biographies of Dylan and was struck by the man's transformations.
"The thing I just kept hearing from every account of Dylan was about this life of serial change, in a way far more profound to a culture than David Bowie's different chameleon-like changes or Madonna's that would come decades later. These changes had deep intellectual, cultural, almost physical effects on Dylan's audience," Haynes said.
"He undermines the things you count on, your touchstones. He shakes up the things that people used to build their own selves on. Every time you grab on to him, he's somewhere else. I thought the only way to do anything in a film about him would be to dramatise that fact, to use that as the sort of principle to organise the narrative, or many narratives."
The youngest of the Dylans is played by 11-year-old African American Marcus Carl Franklin, who goes by the name of Woody Guthrie. The character also alludes to the influence of black music on Dylan. Then there's Arthur (Ben Whishaw) the young adult poet and rebel who represents Dylan under the influence of Arthur Rimbaud. Jack (Christian Bale) is based on Dylan's protest singer, during the period when he achieved his initial success with songs including The Times They Are A-Changin'. Jude (Blanchett) is Dylan going electric, Robbie (Heath Ledger) is the superstar Dylan during the years when he married and started a family, while Pastor John (Bale again) is born-again Bob. The least successful character is Billy (Richard Gere) re-imagined as outlaw Billy The Kid, who refers to Dylan's later western phase including the album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
The two Australian actors have been singled out for their performances - Blanchett won the best actress prize at the Venice Festival and the best supporting actress Golden Globe, though somehow missed out on winning the Oscar in that category. Ledger is impressive in the film's most heartfelt, romantic scenes, which were filmed long before his death, when he was still part of a happy family unit with Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda.
"I stumbled across Bob Dylan in my early teens, but I don't think I was sophisticated enough to fully understand the genius of his poetry then," Ledger explained last September. "I was more concerned with girls and surfing," he added, chuckling. "But the more I matured, the more I understood and appreciated his language. Certainly after being invited on to this project and doing my research and finding his more obscure albums and songs, my appreciation and respect for him really expanded."
Ledger in fact came to the film via Williams, who was already playing a smaller role as Coco (based on Edie Sedgwick) Dylan's lover in the Blanchett section. "Another actor was cast in the role and he pulled out so I put my hand up, offered my services and Todd said yes which was great."
Ledger's Dylan is the rock star. "My scenes focus on Dylan's struggle with love and his marriage and divorce and family and balancing being in the media spotlight."
The character is personified as a Hollywood star called Robbie Clark - an irresponsible jerk who neglects his wife and kids so that his marriage falls apart. While clearly there's an eerie resonance with the subsequent events of Ledger's life, there's also a parallel with his long-held disdain for the paparazzi. Robbie almost has it out with a photographer who tries to disturb his family in Woodstock, where Dylan became a recluse following his 1967 motorcycle accident.
Initially, when Robbie falls in love, the film evokes the energy of the late 60s and is reminiscent of the films by Jean-Luc Godard, says Haynes, which accounts for Robbie's painter wife (an amalgam of Dylan's ex-wife Sarah Loundes and one-time girlfriend, Suze Rotolo) being played by the French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. It's the one point of romance in the film and the scenes are poignant and sad.
Blanchett became a little consumed by her character, which had husband, Andrew Upton, worried for a time. She describes her Dylan as "a folk music star going electric and self-combusting in front of the media.
"It's a very poetic riff on identity and who Dylan could possibly be, if Dylan only knew," she muses.
This hallucinogenic-fuelled period of Dylan's career in the mid 60s was his most productive and in many ways the most interesting. "I suppose the silhouette that I have is the most iconic, so I was always going to be the one with the most scrutiny," Blanchett admits. Remarkably, her transformation involved little change to her physical appearance. "We just added eyebrows, a bad teeth guard to interrupt her perfect movie star teeth and some sideburns and the wig," notes Haynes.
Although Blanchett's abilities with a guitar may not bear as much scrutiny, she says, "Dylan's guitar playing is not his forte and he was so out of it, you know, so there was a bit of poetic license."
Would she like to meet him? "Yes and no. The best way to get to know people is either by having sex with them or by working with them and I don't think either of those things are on the cards with me and Dylan," she admits sardonically.
"So I think it's probably better that I er, don't. But he's amazing. He's the ultimate artist, isn't he? I find him utterly inspiring, the way he said, this is the path that I'm on and I'm not interested in what any of you think about me."
LOWDOWN
What: I'm Not There, the lateral-thinking Bob Dylan biographical film directed by Todd Haynes
When & Where: Skycity, Hoyts, Rialto cinemas from Thursday
