I’m still thinking about I’m Not There. Something’s been bothering me about the film, something striking me as enormously wrong, and it’s taken me a while to figure out what that is, if this is, in fact, part of what’s wrong with it, or if I’ll have dismissed it a month or two from now as yet another piece of worthless claptrap, but if I can say something before another is committed to celluloid, I’ll distribute hoorahs all around.
2:
First: the degree of visual quotation. Dylan can quote Gatsby in “Summer Days,” and we don’t feel the edges of The Great Gatsby — unless, of course, we know the novel very well. However, by quoting 8 1/2, by quoting Persona, the visuals are the edge. We know it’s Persona because it’s the seemingly same spider moving in the same direction; we know it’s supposed to be the body on the table because it’s the same color scheme, the same positioning and the same dressing of the body. Is it because quotation’s the point in I’m Not There? Possibly — and if that ends up being the truth, count me among the disappointed — but, for now, compare that scene with P.T. Anderson quoting The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in There Will Be Blood, or Soy Cuba in Boogie Nights. Anderson gets away with it. What bothers me is that I can’t figure out why the changes made in Haynes’ quotations aren’t enough.
In praise of the film, someone wrote, “I’m Not There sythesizes cues from Italian Neorealism and surrealism, Richard Lester’s Beatles films, cinema verite, Wong Kar Wai’s early sensual experiments with celluloid manipulation and debasement, Goddard’s Sympathy for the Devil, Douglas Sirk’s tearjerkers, contemporary ‘talking head’ documentaries …”
But Haynes doesn’t “sythensize,” and that spirals a little closer to why the changes aren’t enough. Haynes bluntly quotes the above-mentioned films. Such bald-faced quotes lumped in with Dylan’s quotes intended to act as larger-than-the-scene signifiers makes for bad cinematic math. And even if he did sythensize them, it should have made for a newer-than-one-would-think product; it would hide the architecture. Instead, the film walks like Arthur Marx’s play about his Dad’s life — quote after quote after quote.
3:
I’m still curious why the language used to describe “Like a Rolling Stone” is instead applied to “Maggie’s Farm.” Was there too much joy/ triumph in the How does it feel? Was the phrase pointing in too many directions?
4:
Whale? Homer? Seriously? Seriously? “Your secret’s safe with me?” Is the 7th Dylan Spiderman?
5:
6:
If you’re going to talk about the speech at the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, why not play “My Back Pages” afterward? The idea of someone losing their hang-ups and earning youngness?
7:
Why does he recast the “Judas!” moment as one of failure instead of triumph?
8:
Speaking of which: weirdly hyper-dramatic reactions in the NECLU and “Judas!” scenes. “And so — oh, God, they’re filming!”
9:
Even though you had to follow a traditional narrative arc, it’s a shame how some of the better bits were turned, i.e., Rimbaud moping about “Not” creating anything, whereas Chris Ricks — in Visions of Dylan — gives us the slightly fuller scoop:
“The capital N on “Not” is Notoriously the only capital letter in the hundred-and-more lines of Advice, and Dylan did well Not to obey it but, instead, to be beyond his own command.”
10:
Naming the reasons for the change and showing someone reacting into change doesn’t negate the ability one has to change or make the “myth” any less “mythy.”
