“I always try to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.” ~ Bob Dylan, “Maggie’s Farm”
Last month, when I saw Bob Dylan and his band in concert, I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, I knew his plenty of his songs, but which would he play there? More importantly, what style would he play them in? I loved the show, but others around me were disappointed at the relative lack of classics he played. I smiled while they complained about the absence of “Like a Rolling Stone,” or “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” or “Isis,” the favorite of one nearby attendee. In a way, this encapsulates what I love and value about Dylan- not just that he’s got so many great songs to his name that no concert could possibly contain them, but also that he’s always confounding our expectations for him. Much like Joni Mitchell once despaired of becoming “a human jukebox,” Dylan was going to play whatever he damn pleased.
I thought of the concert, as well as every other memory I have of Dylan, when watching Todd Haynes’ latest film,
I’m Not There. Rather than trying to pin down this most enigmatic, slippery, and arguably the most important musician of his time, Haynes’ film is a kaleidoscope of Dylan’s life, an image fractured into six distinct pieces. There’s the folkie wunderkind (Christian Bale) who later turns to Christ; the mid-sixties phenomenon (Cate Blanchett) overwhelmed and resistant to his iconic status; the outlaw (Richard Gere), hiding out in the changing West; the star (Heath Ledger) who is falling out with his wife; and the poet (Ben Whislaw) giving an interview that feels more like an interrogation. Perhaps most significantly, there’s the 11-year-old boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) who takes to the road with his guitar under the name Woody Guthrie, and embodies the ramblin’ folkie backstory Dylan painted for himself as a young man. The character name is significant here, providing an added layer of irony to the taunt of a nameless British heckler, who memorably cried out, “whatever happened to Woody Guthrie?”
As you might have guessed from the description,
I’m Not There couldn’t be further from the likes of
Walk the Line and its ilk. Along with his half-dozen Dylans, Haynes tells each of their stories in a different style, ranging from the
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid-style Western in the Gere scenes, to the trappings of direct-cinema (with its tentative, reactive camera work) when Bale is onscreen. The era Blanchett portrays onscreen is the best-documented of all, and Haynes isn’t content to ape Pennebaker, instead melding the trappings of
Don’t Look Back with the sensual overload of Fellini. Practically the only through line to the film is Dylan himself- his life, his legend, and of course his music.
Naturally, the songs are incontestably great, and Haynes both chooses them wisely and uses them to great effect. The film isn’t quite so consistent- while much of it works like gangbusters, the Gere segments are more interesting conceptually than they are in the execution. Likewise, I thought the film devoted too much time to the disillusion of Ledger’s marriage to Charlotte Gainsbourg, obviously meant to evoke his
Blood on the Tracks-era mindset. And frankly, I wanted more of Christian Bale. But the stories involving Franklin and Blanchett more than compensate. Franklin is a natural, engaging performer, and this section’s evocation of Dylan’s falsified persona is spot-on. And Blanchett is sort of marvelous here, capturing both the detached amusement and the cornered-rat vitriol that so famously pissed off Roger Ebert back in the day. This is why Haynes’ homage of
8 ½ is so apt- surrounded by people who makes demands on him, Dylan could hardly be blamed for wanting to back away.
The biopic genre is full of movies about major figures, but few of them get the films that their lives actually deserve. Thankfully, Haynes does his subject justice. Fittingly, it has less to do with historical record than what Werner Herzog refers to as “ecstatic truth.” We don’t come out of the film knowing any more of the facts about Dylan, but we learn about him all the same. During the film, one of the Dylans states, “I accept chaos. I’m not sure whether it accepts me.” In the organized chaos of
I’m Not There, the answer is an emphatic “yes.”
Rating: 8 out of 10.
people who haven't seen the movies in question might recognize them from the books. But it appears that I've broken that rule for Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, the source of last week's quiz. For my money, it's a movie that is too often overlooked in Scorsese's filmography in favor of his grittier, more violent works. At the time of the film's release, the Merchant Ivory team was at the height of its creative powers, and some critics and audiences misinterpreted Age as Scorsese's stab at period-piece respectability. But handsome though it is, the film's voluptuous style and rigorous attention to detail are pure Scorsese, as are its passions, buried as they are under lavish costumes and regimented social manners. Time has been kind to The Age of Innocence, and I believe the film to be Scorsese's greatest masterpiece. Too few of you were able identify the film, but I'm hoping that its presence here will compel you either to give it a chance or to revisit it. It's well worth your time.
February?
That's gotta be the Michael Powell version of The Thief of Bagdad, right?
If there's anything better than a great last line, it's a great last line delivered by one of cinema's greatest voices. Yes, Orson Welles' final bit of narration in his film The Lady From Shanghai (the source of last week's quiz) is one for the ages. not least because it was his bittersweet kiss-off to the film's leading lady, Rita Hayworth, to whom he was married. Even after cropping her lush red hair and dying it platinum blonde, Hayworth remained undeniably luscious in the role, and it's possible that only a soon-to-be ex-husband could have possibly tried to forget her. Lady isn't one of Welles' masterpieces, but it's full of stunning moments, especially the famed hall-of-mirrors finale. I just missed being able to see it on the big screen in Cleveland a few years ago- I moved up there just after they screened it- and I'd love to see it projected larger than life.
For many purists, the only true Zatoichi was Shintaro Katsu, who portrayed the legendary warrior in over two dozen films and a television series. So when Takeshi Kitano decided to revisit the character, there were quite a few who denounced the film sight unseen. However, Kitano's Zatoichi (released in the U.S. as The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi and the source of last week's quiz) is a blast in its own right. Kitano's take on the character is a far cry from Katsu's lovable clown, with the eternal badass playing him with brutal efficiency. But while the original Zatoichi movies were merely above-average entertainment, Kitano's direction makes his film a work of art as well, with CGI blood that's both fake-looking and aesthetically gorgeous, and an affecting supporting performance by Tadanobu Asano as a sad-eyed ronin who joins up with gangsters purely for financial reasons. And in the final reel, it turns into a musical, complete with extended foot-stomping dance numbers, much to the chagrin of at least one of last week's contestants. Zatoichi didn't make much of a dent at the U.S. box office, but it was a hit with festival crowds, taking home the audience awards at both Venice and Toronto- in the latter case, surely the oddest film to win the award since Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing in 1980.
Seems that I was finally able to stump most of you with last week's quotation, taken from George Miller's Lorenzo's Oil. I've been told by more than one of you that you own a copy of the film that has gone as yet unwatched. Is this because of the depressing subject matter, or its superficial resemblance to the kind of disease-of-the-week weepie that clogged network television during weekend prime time programming slots throughout the 90s? Rest assured that Lorenzo's Oil is a different breed altogether, a film too tough-minded to angle for cheap sentiment. While it acknowledges the role that love and determination can play in getting through a disease, it also shows that it also takes ingenuity and a whole lot of luck. Another thing that distinguishes it is that the fruits of the Odone's labors helped not only their son but thousands of boys throughout the world. Thanks to Miller- then best known as the director of the Mad Max trilogy and himself an M.D.- it's a highly distinguished entry in an undistinguished genre, and one of the few Hollywood melodramas of the last few decade that actually earns your tears. In my opinion, there are few 1990s Hollywood movies more unjustly underappreciated than Lorenzo's Oil, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.
