Hoberman. Haynes. Dylan.

"I'm Not There is the movie of the year - but to whom does Todd Haynes's Bob Dylan biopic actually belong, and when was it really made?" asks J Hoberman in the Voice.

Some pieces need an entry all their own, and this, most certainly, is one of them. Hoberman not only presents probably the closest and sharpest reading yet of I'm Not There (if you know of one that's closer and/or sharper, do drop a line), he also notes that it's "part of the larger, ongoing Dylan revival brilliantly orchestrated by his manager, Jeff Rosen." And he doesn't seem to mind. At all.

"[A]s Haynes's film opens at Film Forum, DA Pennebaker will premiere an hour's worth of outtakes from his 1967 Dylan portrait, Don't Look Back, at the IFC Center, and the Walter Reade will run Murray Lerner's The Other Side of Mirror, a straightforward documentary of Dylan's mid-'60s appearances at three consecutive Newport Folk Festivals." That one gets a smart review here, too.

But wait, as they say, there's more. A "Dylan and the Movies" primer is folded into all this, with special attention lavished on Renaldo & Clara, an endurance test I'll admit to having endured more than once.

As for I'm Not There: "It's an essay that derives its intellectual force from the idea of Bob Dylan, and its emotional depth from his songs. Haynes doesn't deny his subject's insistence that his authentic self could never be explained or portrayed - and might not even exist. 'I don't know who I am most of the time,' little Woody confesses in the midst of his compulsive mythmaking. We don't either, although, then again, we really do."

I'm Not There updates are happening here.

Posted by dwhudson at November 20, 2007 3:52 PM