Retro Review: I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 07)

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2010 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation.

*************

In the opening salvo of his near-Proustian length critique par excellence in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman called I'm Not There the movie of the year - and he may very well be right. In fact he could ostensibly exchange the word year for the word decade and still be very much within his rights. Easily the most daring experimentation in filmmaking (read: a bite in the ass of cinema) since Lars von Trier's Dogville in 2003.

Half casting stunt, half cinematic experimentation, Todd Haynes, the former Brown University semiotics major turned cinematic manipulator extraordinaire, and the man who gave us Far From Heaven, an impressionistic and socially rupturous homage to Douglas Sirk and a scathing indictment of American sexual mores, Velvet Goldmine, a kinky Citizen Kane structured ode to glam rock, [Safe], his diabolic take on the insecurities of humanity and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, an absurdist Barbie-dolled super-8 mockery of everything America holds dear (sort of), now hands us his by-far fullest plate yet - a deconstruction not only of the enigmatic Bob Dylan, a man who playing his own game of propagandism, already sliced and diced himself into a multitude of ideas and ideals, but of the very concept of cinema itself. Taking the typically one-man (or one-woman) ultra-polished horse and pony show that is the biopic genre, Haynes flips it on its already much beleaguered head and shows us not one man, but six (or really seven) different aspects of one man, here personified by six different actors, all of different ages, races and even genders. Six actors, but in search of what?

With influences ranging from Fellini and Godard to Laurence Sterne and James Joyce, with a bit of Rashomonian Chaucer thrown in and an undercurrent of Marshall McLuhan to boot, Todd Haynes has created not only a film "about" Bob Dylan, but also a film that plays at times as being from Dylan, to Dylan, by Dylan and even on occasion, becoming Dylan. Breathed of the same cubist air in which Dylan created his own self-imitating (and oft-maligned and highly underrated) opus Renaldo & Clara back in 1978, and possibly with many of the same box office blockades (as far as the common moviegoer is concerned - length, unwarranted philosophizing, a dibilitatingly obscure linear structure et al), Haynes' film is a stroke of mad genius mixed with an air of semi-satiric superiority and blended with the mystique of frustrated stardom - all rolled into some sort of postmodern concoction of deconstructive catharsis.

First up (and I say that with an air of trepidation since the film is only superficially linear and Haynes cuts back and forth at the slightest provocation and/or whim) is Ben Whishaw as the poet Arthur Rimbaud, the personification of Dylan's poetic aspirations. In the midst of an interrogation being held by an off-stage voice, Whishaw is both mouthpiece for Dylan and his very own Joan of Arc, his face as blaise here as Dreyer's Maria Falconetti's was tormented. He is the voice of dissident, and diffident, reason.

Next comes Marcus Carl Franklin as a ten year old train-hopping black runaway in 1959 who goes by the name Woody Guthrie. Rather appropriately played by a black child actor, considering Dylan's youthful exuberance for Guthrie and his being led to the origin of blues music through this exuberance, this is the boy the man would become. Obsessed to the point of believing his own lies, Woody is Dylan as Dylan perhaps dreamt himself as a child. Tremulous at times, yet full of verve and desire. Replete with likely apocryphal tales of being a serial runaway, Dylan's childhood fantasies of becoming his one-time idol - fantasies which have many times over either been surpassed or missed altogether - play as both prelude and omen to what is to come. Where Rimbaud is his mind, Woody is the heart of Bob Dylan.

After the child prodigy incarnation of Woody vanishes from the screen (for now), we are given Christian Bale as the finger-pointing, political singing-songwriting-harmonica-playing troubadour Jack Rollins, here accompanied by Julianne Moore doing her best Joan Baez in full VH1 Where Are They Now? mode, giving us the early acoustic-strung world shattering aspirations of a still quite green Dylan. We watch wide-eyed naivety turn to jaded indignance in Bale's superbly bitter (and typically tortured Bale-ian) performance. This is Dylan turning his back on what people "expected" him to be. This is Dylan refusing to be the left-wing lap-dog they wanted. This is Dylan turning toward a different left. The left of the counterculture. The left of his Beat idols like Ginsberg and Kerouac and McClure. This is the soul of Dylan, aching to be alive.

This turning away from the "established" folk-centered left and turning toward the beat aesthetic is perfectly played in what is surely the centerpiece of Haynes' cubist masterwork (as well as the film's most sincere shot at Oscar gold) - Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, wild-eyed speed-freak electric rock & roll rebel at the apex of his (or her - does it even matter at this point?) circus cannonball blast to stardom. Shot in black and white and layered after both D.A. Pennebaker's 1965 Dylan doc Don't Look Back and Fellini's 1963 masterpiece of misinterpretation and misdirection 8 1/2, this section is rife with allegorical slaps at modern-day mass-hysteroid media and the often stampeding effect it has on celebrity, complete with a queer little helium-voiced "cameo" by four mop-topped lads from Liverpool, playing A Hard Day's Night/Help!-like with a similarly frolicking Jude/Dylan/Blanchett.

And if Dylan truly is the hero of our story then Bruce Greenwood as a quite nasty little Brit TV talk show host amalgamation known as Mr. Jones (who incidentally provocates a spectacular rendition of The Ballad of The Thin Man) is the villain. Snidely mocking Dylan's pretentiousness while snarkily being counter-attacked by Dylan/Quinn/Blanchett's sharp-tongued back quips, these Pennebaker-inspired sparring matches are the epitome of Dylan's jadedness toward the media. Meanwhile, amidst this Felliniesque circustry, we get David Cross as a pitch-perfect Allen Ginsberg making his entrance a la golf cart and Michelle Williams as part Edie Sedgewick, part personification of Dylan's fading muse. It was shortly after this time period - the Blonde on Blonde era and what many call the apogee of Dylan's songwriting career - that Dylan crashed his motorcycle and became a backwoods recluse for several years.

This segues nicely into Dylan's recluse days (the first version of them that is) and into the "family" life of Dylan personified here by Heath Ledger, doing his best James Dean (yet another Dylan idol). Ledger plays Robbie Clark, half rising half fading star of the silver screen and the incarnation of Dylan as Dylan himself showed in parts of Renaldo & Clara. Failing actor, failing husband and failing father. The "macho" antithesis of Blanchett's foppish Jude, Ledger's Robbie is a man at constant odds with himself and all those around him. Playing Robbie's wife (and stand-in for Sara Dylan, Suze Rotolo and other Dylan loves and muses - as well as Haynes own personal Anna Karina) is French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, appropriately (and surely uncoincidentally) cast in the role of spotlight mother, herself coming from the womb of a fashion model and the loins of a pop star. This is Dylan as false God. This is Dylan as faker. This is Dylan's lost soul.

And what would a lost soul be without someone to find - and save - it. This is exactly what happened to Dylan in the late seventies when he "found" Jesus and this is just what we get from Christian (aptly named?) Bale in redux. Former musical instigator Jack Rollins is now evangelical minister Paster John in what plays as a brief interlude from the rest of the story - which may just be what Dylan's own "rebirth" was.   If Ledger's Robbie was his false God, then this could very well be Dylan as false Man.

Then comes the final act. The reclusive hermetic Dylan. The fantasy Dylan. The dream Dylan. He comes in the package of a frazzled greying Richard Gere known as Mr. B, or as we later find out, Billy the Kid. Running from the law, running from his music, running from his fans and running from himself perhaps, Gere's Billy the Kid appears in what could very well be a dream world, full of surreal imagery and replete with masked men, women and children. Everyone, even in his dreams, are hiding - and Dylan is no different. With the sudden (re)appearance of Bruce Greenwood, this time behind his own mask as an aging Pat Garrett, Gere's "Kid" goes on the run and finds himself hopping back on the trains of his youth - and in doing so, we are taken right back to the beginning again. Structured in many ways upon Joyce's Finnigan's Wake, it is Billy's temporally implausible discovery of Woody's guitar aboard an empty boxcar that brings Haynes' film river running itself right back to where we started from.

And still, while much of the film takes on a Joycean life of its own, and it is, of course, based on the life of (if not the ruminations of) Bob Dylan, not to mention the melange of influences cited earlier, there is yet another must-see influence weighing heavy upon the auteuristic stylings of Mr. Haynes (could it be that Haynes has as many sides as Dylan himself?), and that influence is Jean-Luc Godard. Beginning and ending (as useless as those relative terms are in this case) in much the same gunshot fashion as Godard's Masculine/Feminine - not coincidentally the only one of Godard's seemingly endless oeuvre to openly reference Dylan - Haynes, at his most Godardian (and really, what current filmmaker is any more Godardian than Haynes right now?), lock stocks and barrels his way through the life of Bob Dylan with the stream-of-consciousness rhythms of a deconstructionive mad scientist. Haynes as the all-knowing, all-seeing (all that can be known and/or seen that is) doctor, and the many ideas of who or what or where or when Bob Dylan is, as his somewhat flawed yet genius monster - all the while never kow-towing to what one expects from the genre of biopic. After all, as Haynes recently more than alludes to in an interview in Cineaste, there are lies in all biography, but at least here we are let in on the joke.

I have a good friend who is, and I don't think he would be the slightest bit offended by the choice of adjective, obsessed with all things Dylan. Having seen him in concert about 953 times or so and owning just about every recorded piece of music, bootlegs and all, and much of it on vinyl, and referring to Dylan as The P.I. (for those of us in the know, that stands for Prophet Incarnate), and being a true Dylanologist of the highest order, I am sure he would get many more of the referential moments than even I did. Which may very well beg for a precursive crash course in Dylanology for those out there not so inclined toward The P.I., and though the recurring tarantula should be quite obvious to even the novice Dylan acolyte, I'm sure a primer in watching Scorsese's expounding doc No Direction Home (a great film even outside of the predications of I'm Not There) wouldn't hurt anyone.

In sum, there are not many people who have been able to successfully metamorphose into so many different creatures (possibly John Lennon or Miles Davis or the aforementioned Godard), but still this film is not just about Dylan. Never uttering the name throughout, this film is as much about Bob Dylan as it is not about Bob Dylan. Taking Proust's idea of a "succession of selves" and running with it - as Dylan has done to himself throughout his career (we are still not sure of many of the facts) - Haynes shows us not just another life (or another movie), but life (or Cinema) itself.   

[Originally published  at The Cinematheque on 12/16/07] 

USA! USA! USA! : The Twelve Best American Directors Working Today

To jump on the flag-waving band wagon that seems to be going around right now (for future generations reading this post, it is the Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! revelry after the recent killing of Public Enemy No. 1 Osama Bin Laden of which I speak) I give you my choices for the best American filmmakers working today.  And please, I whole-heartedly welcome you all to submit your own lists in the comments section.  I would really like to find out who you think is the best.  Here are mine.

1) Quentin Tarantino - This love-him-or-hate-him nouvelle Grindhouse auteur may well be the most derisive director working today.  I hear almost as many people say they despise Tarantino as they say they love him.  I must admit I do not understand all these haters at all.  I suppose if one has delicate sensibilities or if one were to like their cinema light and fluffy with boondoggles and butterfly wings, then perhaps they are taken aback by the in-your-face arrogance of that thing called Tarantino Cinema.  Personally I would (and am doing it right now) boldly state that QT has never made a bad film.  From Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction to Jackie Brown (fuck the naysayers!) to Kill Bill (Volumes 1 and 2) to Death Proof (both Grindhouse and extended versions) to Inglourious Basterds, the man is like a coke-fueled King Midas.  Even the films he wrote without directing (True Romance, From Dusk Til Dawn) or his segments in longer films (Four Rooms, his token scene from Sin City) he is the proverbial Man.  Madman is perhaps a better term, but that makes it even better.  I have been accused on several occasions of being obsessed with QT and in no instance have I ever denied such a thing.  Now Faster, Pussycat! Film! Film! your next movie!!

2) Paul Thomas Anderson - I must admit to having had mixed emotions about Boogie Nights at first (my mind has been greatly expanded since my first viewing and therefore I now quite enjoy a movie I had originally walked out of) but I loved all of PTA's other films at first glance.  The one that put the director over the proverbial top though, was his mind-altering Wellesian, Fordian, Kubrickian (and about a half a dozen other director-labeled descriptives) There Will Be Blood.  A batshitcrazy pseudo-western (based on Sinclair's Oil!) starring an equally batshitcrazy Daniel Day-Lewis (in this critic's not-so-humble opinion, the best living actor in the world), There Will Be Blood is one of those select few films made today that I would have no qualms about calling a masterpiece (a word too often bally-hooed about by folks without much care for what it truly means, but a word that fits perfectly with Anderson's film).  Anderson, like Tarantino, is a true cineaste and it is this love - this rabid desire if you will - for all things cinema is what makes this cineaste love him so much.  His next film will be called The Master, and though it is not an autobiographical biopic, I cannot think of a more appropriate title.

3) Martin Scorsese - Perhaps if this were a list about the seventies or eighties or even nineties (at least the early nineties) Mr. Scorsese would be my number one choice.  But alas, the great master is no longer at his directorial peak.  He is though, certainly still well above many of his generational compatriots.  Lucas and Spielberg have sold out.  Bob Rafelson does TV when he does anything anymore and Bogdanovich is mainly a film historian these days (and a damn good one btw!).  The two Movie Brats (as they were often called) that are still putting out respectable work, Coppola and Allen, may still make good films on occasion (Tetro and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are respective examples) but nothing comparable to their earlier outputs. Scorsese's latest, Shutter Island, though hated by many of my fellow critics (what!!?) is a return of sorts to his daring cinema of thirty+ years ago, and with it helps put the auteur back near the top - after a decade or so of still good but not Scorsese good filmmaking.  Marty (can I call you Marty?) is one of my all-time favourite filmmakers (a quote of his sets proudly atop my blog) and it is this that keeps him so high on this list - even though he is the highest listed director here without a true masterpiece within the last decade (though he has at least five of these earlier in his career).  Hopefully his foray into 3D (he does love experimenting with new technology) with Hugo Cabret will keep this going.

4) David Lynch - The other "old guy" on this list (see Scorsese above for the other, even older guy), Lynch is responsible for the film I name as the best film of the last decade - Mulholland Dr..  Between that and Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Lost Highway and Wild at Heart (again, damn the naysayers!) and even Dune - as well as the best fake iphone commercial ever - Lynch is surely a master filmmaker and with his most recent, INLAND EMPIRE (and who doesn't LOVE movies that come in all CAPITALS?) proves that not only is he as batshitcrazy as ever, but is also still in top form.  Never a director to bring the masses together, Lynch is surely an acquired taste (and probably only a taste me and my fellow freaks can thoroughly enjoy) and will probably never get that AFI tribute (though a Friar's Club Roast could be fun) but this just puts him in the same class as directors like Antonioni, Tarkovsky and Bergman.  Not bad company indeed.  Of course one would have to take Antonioni, Tarkovsky and Bergman and ratchet up the insanity about a trillion notches or so (and possibly put a backwards-talking dwarf somewhere in there).

5) Joel & Ethan Coen - Blending a film noir aesthetic with acerbic comic teeth, these Minnesota born brothers have amassed quite an interesting oeuvre since their debut more than twenty-five years ago.  With hectic tales of almost surreal happenings, using many of the same actors over and over and over again (the venn diagram for their casts must be a colourful mess - and here is as close as I could find on the matter), the Coens have created an almost perfect streak of thoroughly enjoyable films (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers had to come and break the streak).  From Blood Simple. to Raising Arizona to Miller's Crossing to Barton Fink to Fargo to Lebowski and O Brother to (skipping a few aforementioned) No Country for Old Men and their more recent less than noirish works (but no less complex) A Simple Man and True Grit - like I said, an almost perfect streak.  Their masterpiece (there's that word again) is No Country - a modern-day western done in pure Coen style, but seemingly ratcheted up to John Ford standards.

6) Wes Anderson - Cool and quirky (and annoyingly beloved by all those hipster doofuses out there - but don't hold that against the man) the other Anderson on this list may not have the deeply inbred creepiness of Lynch, nor the balls-out bravura of Scorsese and PTA, nor the flagrant arrogance of Tarantino, but what he does have is a precise (some might say anal) exactness for absolutely everything in his movies - down to the conch shell in the corner of one of the cabins of the Belefonte to the tweed pattern of Fox's jacket to the choice of wallpaper in Margot Tenenbaums bedroom.  Intricate to the nth degree, Wes has manufactured (and manicured) a series of painstakingly detailed cinematic dioramas all representing (in one way or another) the American semi-estranged family unit. My personal favourite is his obvious ode to J.D. Salinger, The Royal Tenenbaums.  My lovely wife isn't quite as taken with it as I am (saying it rips off Salinger more than it pays homage to him) but I still (and I suppose defiantly so to my wonderful - and usually better-tasted - spouse) herald the film as Anderson's near-masterpiece.

7) Michael Mann - I must preface this entry with the fact that I absolutely loathe Michael Mann's version of The Last of the Mohicans.  Granted, I have only ever seen it once, and as expressed above, I did a 180 on Boogie Nights, so perhaps loathe is a rather strong word, but it is how I feel and I thought you should know that before I begin to praise that very same filmmaker as my seventh favourite.  One of the founding fathers of the seminal 1980's TV show Miami Vice, Mann has made quite a career for himself with such visceral, hard-hitting films as Manhunter (having recognition as the first Hannibal Lecktor movie), Heat (De Niro and Pacino together for the first time - and before you bellyache, the two never had any scenes together in The Godfather Part II), The Insider (Russell Freakin' Crowe before he Gladiator'd out), Collateral (one of the few times I actually liked a Tom Cruise movie), the oft-maligned but quite intense Miami Vice (you can go home again!) and the DV-made Public EnemiesThe Last of the Mohicans a second chance. (Archetypal American mythology through 21st century cinematic technology).  Now I feel like giving

8) Sofia Coppola - No, this is not the affirmative action part of the list (nor is it the nepotism part - her dad isn't even on the list), the young Coppola deserves to be on the list - even if she has made just four films thus far.  Many have maligned Coppola's latest film, Somewhere, and I suppose it is the weakest of her four films, but then critics (myself most certainly not included) have been maligning the lovely and talented Ms. Coppola since pretty much day freakin' one.  Being called a pampered brat and/or spoiled debutante, Coppola has been criticized for basically being the child of celebrity.  This is of course ridiculous and merely critics without any sense maligning someone not for what they do but for who they are.  What she does is make films - good films - maybe even a great film or two.  She has a lyrical beauty to her films - if one can say such a thing without sounding too trite or cliche'd.  Many claim Lost in Translation to be her best work but I would say her follow-up to that Oscar winning picture (she won for Best Screenplay), Marie Antoinette.  A piece of candy-coloured pop art moviemaking (okay, perhaps she does have a debutantish outlook) her extraordinary po-mo biopic is a thing of sheer cinematic beauty.

9) Todd Haynes - The man who once made a (extremely unofficial) biopic of Karen Carpenter using Barbie dolls (sued by both Mattel and the Carpenter estate!) has grown into one of the finest and most mature filmmakers working today - while still managing to keep his youthful exuberance and radical sensibilities.  His Far From Heaven homage to Sirkian filmmaking was a brilliantly subversive piece of cinematic art (and it looked simply good enough to eat).  Safe was both seductive and appalling and Velvet Goldmine was just balls-out brashness.  His finest work so far though is that po-mo work of pure genius and (and I am going to use that wonderfully overplayed word again, but I sincerely mean it) masterpiece of technique, I'm Not There.  To make a biopic about Bob Dylan, with six different actors (one a woman!) playing the modern-day troubadour, and still never once even mentioning the name Bob Dylan - well, it is just fucking brilliant.  Tack onto this, his HBO mini-series of Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet, and you have a sturdy number nine on our list.

10) Darren Aronofsky - One could call his films difficult (and many have) but that is merely a lazy way of saying intriguing.  From his tiny waking moment of pi to his surrealist WTF!? mindgame Requiem for a Dream to his audacious epoch-spanning flop The Fountain (flop or not, it is the director's most daring film to date and should not be shoved aside so carelessly and callously) to his yin yang double fist bump of The Wrestler and Black Swan (Aronofsky claims, perhaps just kiddingly, that these were originally one movie before being split apart at the gender lines)this mustachioed auteur may not be able to claim a masterpiece for himself yet (though The Fountain and Black Swan come closest) I am guessing it is merely a matter of time.

11) David Fincher - The only reason to see the new Hollywood remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (inevitably watered down from the, not great but still sufficiently visceral original) is because David Fincher is directing and we may see a visual orgasm of violence - even if the powers-that-be try to suppress such actions.  Who knows.  What I do know is that between Se7en and Fight Club and Panic Room and Zodiac and The Social Network, Fincher is a master craftsman that well deserves to be part of this list.  Fincher's way of using and manipulating a camera (even in evidence back in his days of making Alien movies) is as good as anyone out there - perhaps better than most (even some on this list).

12) Christopher Nolan - Okay, technically Nolan is a Brit, but he has been working in American Cinema for long enough (only the first of his seven - soon to be eight - films was made in his home country) to receive at least some sort of mention on this list - even if it is at the so-called bottom (the bottom of the top so to speak). Perhaps his Inception was a bit superficial at times (and probably a bit too highly regarded by many) but his grand superhero westerns and sleight-of-hand mysteries make for a rather formidable (and quite manly) show of cinematic power.  Perhaps it is only in comparison to such powerful work as Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight that makes Inception appear as a semi-disappointment.  But Brit or not, he stays on this American list.

Runners-Up:

Steven Soderbergh - The auteur's rather uneven hand (great work like The Limey and Che and the oft-misunderstood Girlfriend Experience is chopped up with lesser things like Erin Brockovich and the Ocean's films) is what stops him from breaking the runner-up barrier.  Still though, a brave, eclectic (and sometimes brilliant) oeuvre is what makes Soderbergh such a dangerous (and I mean that in the most complimentary manner) auteur.

Kelly Reichardt - I loved Old Joy.  I loved Wendy and Lucy.  I have yet to see Meek's Cutoff, but it promises to join the other two in receiving my love.  The reason I do not place Reichardt higher is the simple fact that I have only seen two of her films.  They are both brilliant (Wendy and Lucy is easily one of the best films of the last decade!) but I think I might need more before moving her onto the list proper - a thing I have already allotted a space reserved sign for.

Honourable Mentions (in no particular order):

Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola (they may not be at their peaks anymore but they are still capable of very good cinema); Jim Jarmusch (this Son of Lee Marvin is a visual stylist with a madman's sensibilities - a cool and collected madman, but a madman nonetheless); Richard Linklater (even my great love of Dazed and Confused cannot make me forget some of the director's more recent, and quite uneven fare - nonetheless he should still be counted); Kathryn Bigelow (sort of flying under the radar for many until her somewhat surprising, but completely deserved Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker - beating her ex to boot - has made a series of critically questionable but quite interesting films); Charlie Kauffman (at this point still a one-hit wonder, but what a wonder - and his screenplays aren't bad either); Tim Burton (this freak has made some pretty good-looking movies over the years but his art seems to be trailing off in favour of spectacle these days - still though, he has done enough to muster a mention); Spike Lee (an important director because of race - and lack of other African-American directors doing quality work - but the solid quality direction of Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X give him an importance above race).

Special Jury Award:

Ang Lee - Just as important in his native Taiwan cinema as he is in America, I add Mr. Lee because of his making of three very American (though perhaps with European sensibilities - just to throw in a third continent) movies - The Ice Storm, Ride With the Devil and Brokeback Mountain (the first two great films, the third a true American masterpiece).  This Americanization of sorts allows me to at the very least give Mr. Lee a special mention - plus this is my game and I will play it any damn way I wish.