Interview. Todd Haynes.

"When it was over, I couldn't move," writes David Gates in Newsweek. "Despite a couple of slow stretches - and Dylan has them, too - I'm Not There turns out to be worthy of its subject. This isn't faint praise. It's a full-on rave."

And now, at the main site, Sean Axmaker talks with Todd Haynes about a cinematic highlight of the year, I'm Not There.

"Todd Haynes has devised a Bob Dylan biopic that not even Dylan, for all his self-mythologizing, would have had the audacity to conceive," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Directly answering the charge - made by devastated idolaters when the singer-songwriter abandoned folky protest songs for rock in the mid-60s - that Dylan is an opportunist, a Judas, a hollow man, a fabulist who believes in nothing and picks up and discards one fake persona after another, Haynes makes a passionate case that this protean quality is, in fact, the source of Dylan's greatness.... Haynes works from the outside in, and at his most inspired (parts of Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, and his little-seen Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story), he meets himself coming from the inside out - a magical fusion of mimicry and heart that's not unlike Dylan's."

Updated through 11/25.

But the New Yorker's Anthony Lane is not on board: "The problem for I'm Not There is not one of credibility (after all, these tales are meant to be tall) but of what authority a movie retains when its component parts fly off in different directions.... To come at a stubborn subject from multiple angles was a smart move, but Haynes is so enthralled by the stylistic opportunities that his plan affords, as he was in the 50s-hued Far from Heaven, that he ends up more interested in the angles than in anything else, leaving the elusive Dylan, once again, to slip away."

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy talks with Haynes, too.

Earlier: an 11/11 entry and reviews from Venice, Toronto and New York.

Update: "Haynes's film, overambitious though it may be, is something of a wonder, a challenging concept movie with grace, energy, and style to spare, and proof enough that American cinema can still be vital and rousing," writes Chris Wisniewski at indieWIRE. "Some viewers are likely to pour over I'm Not There, performing studious exegesis, deciphering and perhaps denouncing Haynes's version of the Dylan myth, but that misses the point. This is a movie, not a riddle or dissertation, and an invigorating one at that - a thrilling jolt of pure cinema, clearly the product of an inquisitive mind and a genuine heart." Go catch the opening bit on the coming month's avalanche of top tens, too.

Updates, 11/20: "Even as it dances between visual styles and color palettes (the [Cate] Blanchett portions are Felliniesque black and white, the [Heath] Ledger chapters are filled with rich greens, the Gere segments sooty and brown), there remains something inexplicably cold about I'm Not There," writes Matt Singer at IFC News. "I deeply respect its intentions, admire both its filmmaker and its subject, but have very little affection for the finished product."

"Like the Barbie dolls in Superstar, the casting at first seems like a distancing joke, but Haynes is brilliant at tearing off the top of his own head and giving audiences a peek into his pop obsessions," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "Whether it's the music of the Carpenters or the outlaw romance of Genet (Poison) or the delirious melodrama of Douglas Sirk (Far From Heaven), Haynes is a master at translating old cultural phenomena into new and bold statements, and that's exactly what he does with Dylan here."

Updates, 11/21: "I would not subtract a minute of this movie, or wish it any different," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Nor do I anticipate being finished with I'm Not There anytime soon, since, like 'Subterranean Homesick Blues,' it invites endless interpretation, criticism and elaboration. Instead of proposing a definitive account of Bob Dylan's career, Mr Haynes has used that career as fuel for a wide-ranging (and, if you'll permit me, freewheeling) historical inquiry into his own life and times. In spite of its title, I'm Not There is a profoundly, movingly personal film, passionate in its engagement with the mysteries of the recent past."

"[I]f you force yourself to stop playing spot-the-reference, I'm Not There turns into an often-moving emotional journey not just about art-making and culture and America, but about a deeper disconnectedness," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "The sense of alienation and temporal drift, particularly in the [Richard] Gere section, which I initially considered the weakest, is directly reminiscent of another picture about a strange, um, rock star: Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth. There's another kind of richness within this film that goes beyond the cerebral, chasing a transcendence that I'm not sure Haynes actually believes in."

Matt Prigge talks with Haynes for the Philadelphia Weekly, where Sean Burns writes, "Goofy, symbolically overwrought and shooting for the moon, I'm Not There is an often drop-dead funny, rambling collision of acting styles, film techniques and silly, reckless dares. It's also the most go-for-broke, energizing movie I've seen all year, and if you're looking for some sort of easily encapsulated, psychologically sound statement about the subject... well, I think the title song just about says it all."

And Stephanie Zacharek talks with Haynes for Salon, where she writes, "Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Bob Dylan? That's the question Jean-Pierre Léaud asked in Jean-Luc Godard's Masculine Feminine, a question so essential it was unanswerable, even in 1966.... I'm Not There is Todd Haynes's version of the question, framed not as a demand but as a ballad sung in the language of movies, as if the only way to get to the meaning of Dylan were through another type of song."

Sam Adams talks with Haynes, too, in the Philadelphia City Paper, where he writes, "Jude's defense of the politics of personal transformation echoes Haynes's own journey from ACT UP activist to engaged auteur, one who realizes that queering the canon can be as powerful as shouting slogans.... One way to read I'm Not There is as a bootleg biography that skirts primary sources and focuses on the cultural shock waves sent out from his epicenter."

Another interview: Noel Murray for the AV Club.

"Like all of Haynes's films, this movie burrows into your mind and stays there, bringing up questions, for some time after it's over," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "On the other hand, it feels at times like a formal exercise that, although interesting, doesn't quite cohere into anything larger. Maybe it's because it's hard to extrapolate symbolism from Dylan's life and persona - he isn't a symbol of anything but himself, as Haynes seems to acknowledge."

"I may not have been a huge Dylan fan before I'm Not There, but I was a Haynes fan," writes Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "With this, his most ambitious work to date, the director's affection for re-creating the past finds its match in his innovative dissection of a complex artist's soul."

"Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary No Direction Home settled on Dylan's enigmatic search for an authentic pose as a quest to keep communicating - to keep getting through," writes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine. "The same is true of I'm Not There, which, like Haynes's other movies, works on gut and cerebral levels, within the movie's time period and within contemporary times - both more and less complex than you think."

"I'm Not There shows how the other docs of Dylan have imposed consistency upon an elusive and mercurial person," writes Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times. "What Haynes does is take away the reassuring segues that argue everything flows and makes sense, and to show what's really chaos under the skin of the film."

"Altogether, I'm Not There is a presumptuous act of reverse hubris," grumbles Armond White in the New York Press. "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."

"All right, I confess," sighs Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. "I was bored and confused most of the time, but I plead ignorance as a critic to the many nuances of Mr Haynes's pop cavalcade of Mr Dylan's golden oldies, enmeshed as these are in Mr Haynes's hopelessly and interminably cluttered mise-en-scène."

"Even if you're one of those viewers who finds Haynes an overly cerebral director (I'm not), this music provides an emotional scaffolding that sustains the film," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "When Dylan himself appears in some old concert footage just before the final credits, the close-up on his real, live, harmonica-playing face is all the more affecting in light of the multiple Dylans who've come before: Hey, it's him! Whoever that is."

"One can understand an ambitious filmmaker like Haynes, whose Far From Heaven was a quite successful Douglas Sirk pastiche, being fed up with biopic clichés and pieties, and trying radically to reanimate the genre," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "The trouble is that he does not escape these conventions in I'm Not There. He just dresses them in different clothes."

"I don't hate Dylan. I don't love him either, but I really can't stand his fans," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. "But you don't need to even like or particularly care about Dylan to admire Todd Haynes's I'm Not There. It's a gorgeous, technically adept piece of filmmaking - the world's longest, most expensive montage."

"Todd Haynes (whose aforementioned Velvet Goldmine remains one of the most critically misunderstood and daring films of the last decade) turns out to be the perfect director," writes Tom Huddleston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, "creating a film which is at once confounding and utterly appropriate, deconstructed but still deeply involving, a glorious fantasy rooted in real life, and dreams, and songs, and lies, and lofty ambition."

Peter Sobczynski talks with Haynes for Hollywood Bitchslap, where Brian Orndorf writes, "A marriage of surrealism, idolatry, and psychological babbling, I'm Not There is an especially intoxicating witches brew for the Dylan faithful, with enough directorial cartwheeling to keep the rest interested in the journey as well."

Rob Nelson talks with Haynes - "I'd hope [Dylan] could watch the film and have a chuckle" - for the Boston Phoenix, where Jon Garelick notes that this is a film "not so much about Bob Dylan as about what we think about when we think about Dylan.... Haynes captures the Dylan - and the old, weird America - of our dreams and nightmares." Also, Charles Taylor works his way through the soundtrack, song by song, cover by cover, and James Parker has a story to tell: "I had just removed his hand - gently, I hope - from my knee when the man in the off-white linen suit told me that he was the one who recruited Bob Dylan into the CIA."

"At least Haynes has been mightily discriminating in applying his talents to the screen," writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. "There's somebody I can think of who hasn't been nearly so careful... and his name is Bob Dylan.... Every artist is entitled to blunder into the wilderness once in a while, but arguably this one's most embarrassing (as opposed to simply controversial) public expressions were all on celluloid. Herewith a Hall of Shame list, most of it mercifully unavailable for home viewing..."

In some theaters, audiences will be receiving an official guide to the movie. Ray Pride has the press release.

"With I'm Not There, Portland director Todd Haynes, has crafted one of the densest and most intellectually challenging films you can conceive," writes the Oregonian's Shawn Levy. "But he has made it delightful as well, packing it with gorgeous filmmaking, thrillingly exact detail and a deep sense of play and risk. It's demanding in the best sense, leaving you dazed and wondering and eager to see it again so you can piece together the bits that escaped you with the bits that didn't."

"[T]here's only one direct allusion in I'm Not There to Dylan's Jewish background," notes Douglas Wolk in an excellent piece for Nextbook: "A tightly wound reporter who's been investigating Quinn triumphantly announces on television that the rock 'n' roll idol's real name is 'Aaron Jacob Edelstein.'... If you're looking for Jewish content in Dylan's songs, you'll find it for sure, because their glory is that everything is in there - his lyrics are impossibly rich in connotation and subtext, and he seems to have absorbed, synthesized, and transfigured everything he's ever read or listened to. Some of those sources, inevitably, are Jewish sources, right alongside the lines from Confederate poet Henry Timrod that show up on Modern Times, or the phrases from Junichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza that resurface on Love and Theft, or the fragments of Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' that Christopher Ricks has found peppered throughout 'Not Dark Yet.'"

Updates, 11/22: "Though we first met back in 1991, when the NEA-funded homoeroticism of his first aboveground feature, Poison, was rattling the halls of Congress, Todd Haynes and I 'bonded' (as the saying goes) in April of 1995, when we served as jurors for the short-film competition at the USA Film Festival in Dallas. On our day off from jury duty, we went downtown and visited the spot where John F Kennedy was assassinated - Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum created out of the erstwhile Texas School Book Depository - and came to the immediate conclusion that not only did Oswald 'do it,' but that shooting fish in a barrel would have presented a greater angle of difficulty." And now, David Ehrenstein talks with him again, this time for the LA Weekly. But first: "I'm Not There is an instant classic of the most experimental end of the rock-movie genre - which is to say, Peter Watkins's Privilege, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance, and a little-known film called Renaldo and Clara made by Dylan himself (see 'Dylan by Dylan' sidebar)."

That sidebar's by Tim Grierson; Scott Foundas writes the review: "I'm Not There turns out to be a triumph of intellect and cinematic imagination that feels light rather than heavy, and such a novel approach to film biography as to leave every Ray and Walk the Line looking especially clueless. Haynes pulls off the seemingly impossible - he takes one of the most discussed, written-about, imitated, lusted-after public figures of the 20th century and shows us not something new, but something deeper."

"In presenting Dylan's life as a song for six parts, Haynes neglects to show the sacrifice Dylan's metamorphoses necessarily entailed. I'm Not There diminishes Dylan's legacy by failing to name the price at which it came," argues Jacob Rubin in the New Republic:

It occurred to me while watching I'm Not There how much we associate Dylan with the concept of betrayal. Alone among the musical pop culture icons of the 20th century - more than the Beatles, the Stones, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles - Dylan has been accused of treason, an offense usually reserved for the realms of politics and war. He betrayed the folksters at Newport. He betrayed the rockers when he found Jesus. He betrayed the Christians when he found Judaism. He betrayed the purists when he did Victoria's Secret. He betrayed the Poetry when he stole from the Japanese writer Junichi Saga. He betrayed Joan Baez. He betrayed Sad-Eyed Sara. He betrayed his secret wives of the 80s. It would be very tidy to say something like: In betraying everyone around him, Dylan never betrayed himself. But this isn't true. In each instance, he did betray himself, and with each betrayal became less himself-less human. He had to. He had no room for his own humanity. It all went into the songs.

For Film & Video, Steve Erickson talks with Haynes about visual style. It's in Gay City News that Steve writes, "According to Haynes, the key to self-expression is creatively appropriating other people's influences.... With the greatest respect, Haynes takes the singer off his pedestal, raising prickly questions about the relationship between art and politics and the merits of authenticity within pop culture." There, too, Gerry Visco talks with Haynes.

Spencer Parsons talks with Haynes for the Austin Chronicle.

"I'm Not There is suggestive, not instructive; poetic, not prosaic," writes Chas Bowie in the Stranger. "It is also, I strongly feel after only one viewing, one of the smartest, most innovative, and most beautiful films of this era."

"[A]s a cartwheeling whole, I'm Not There is energizing and expansive, not reductive," writes Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene. "It unfolds and recombines in our heads, ensuring that the Dylan who emerges from this prismatic portrait is, like the movie itself, larger than the sum of his dazzling and maddening parts."

"[I]t's worth noting that Dylan's hipster indifference to celebrity has now been punctured by two officially sanctioned motion pictures this decade (the previous being 2003's woeful Masked and Anonymous) that promote and capitalize on Dylan's iconography," writes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly. "Ultimately, Dylan has always been what he claims to be - a master songwriter and storyteller—and what he will not admit to being—a brilliant, strategic self-marketer."

"The more Dylan you take into I'm Not There, the more you'll get out of it," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club. "And even for the devout, Haynes' daring and reference games don't always pay off.... But the missteps don't detract from the thrilling brilliance of the filmmaking (aided by the remarkable cinematographer Ed Lachman), or dim the sense that Haynes was right in deciding that the fractions of the man would add up to more than the man himself."

"[W]hen I'm Not There is good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's merely annoying," writes Bilge Ebiri for Nerve.

Updates, 11/23: "Haynes is calling Dylan out for creating public confusion even while he does his part to keep that confusion going," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader. "I've seen I'm Not There three times now, and apart from the politically correct sections with suffering Claire, I find it both nimble and gripping. But whenever I try to commit myself to any idea about what I think it's doing, I ultimately balk at having too many choices. You might say I'm not there - at least not yet."

Scott Heller talks with Haynes for the Boston Globe, where Ty Burr writes, "The experience of watching I'm Not There is almost exactly like that of being dropped into one of Dylan's knottiest, most epic songs - 'Desolation Row,' say."

Desson Thompson talks with Haynes for the Washington Post, where Ann Hornaday lists a few aspects "more haunting" than Blanchett's performance: "Marcus Carl Franklin, who plays Dylan in his early self-invention as hobo-waif; Charlotte Gainsbourg, who embodies the stable relationships in Dylan's past; and the Altmanesque landscape of pastoral Americana that serves as a backdrop while Richard Gere (as aging fugitive Billy the Kid) listens to Jim James deliver an ethereal cover of 'Goin' to Acapulco.' Shivers."

"Is it a coincidence or some sort of cultural sign that I’m Not There arrives so closely after Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, which takes a wholly different approach in looking at the Beatles?" asks Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "Despite - or maybe because of - the political degradation of the last couple decades - the 60s continue to exert a gravitational pull."

Update, 11/25: "I'm Not There is the first time that a Todd Haynes movie has left me with the feeling that others have complained about getting from his other pictures, that the people on screen are just delivery systems for his clever ideas and that they have the weight of holograms," writes Phil Nugent.

Posted by dwhudson at November 19, 2007 7:53 AM