Director: Todd Haynes
Rating: 9/10
This is a unique movie. It has a total of six, or seven, stories about six, or seven, different characters that depends on how you count. Each story or character is supposed to be a different stage in Bob Dylan’s life. And no, this is not a biopic. The six leads of the film are: Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, and Richard Gere with Blanchett acting so obviously acting so much better than everyone else.
It is completely pointless to write about the setting, plot, or genre of this film, because they don’t exist. For those of you familiar with Bob Dylan, you can pick out bits and pieces from his life in this movie. For those of you not familiar with Bob Dylan, you might come out even more confused than before you walked in. But from a pure film perspective, this movie is about as original as it gets and as good as it gets. The last time I felt I’ve watched a completely original film was the great “Léolo”.
If you know anything about the musician, you know that he had been a contradiction of himself for as long as he had been writing great lyrics, and to use one story for the life of Dylan would probably only add to the confusion. So Haynes’s decision to use six, or seven lives so that whatever contradictions they make it wouldn’t matter: they are not the same person. And this, the structure of the film is the reason this movie is so good.
The fun part of this film is to pick out references to Dylan’s life. What’s even more fun is to pick out the referred people of that era that include The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol, and Edie Sedgwick. Todd Haynes seems to be highly interested in music. One of his other better-known movies is Velvet Goldmine (also with Christian Bale), which is based on the tumultuous relationship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop with parts of Kurt Cobain and Lou Reed thrown in. He also directed the music video of Sonic Youth’s “Disappear,” and that led to Kim Gordon having a cameo in this movie.
I have to admit that the movie left me confused, as I really have no idea about the central conflict of this movie, it just seems to be a movie filled with people doing what the others are not. I am not sure of the purpose of Richard Gere’s role as Billy the Kid. I wonder why he was in the film in the first place. But maybe that’s just Haynes trying to tell us, that Bob Dylan was, is, and will always be a mystery that we should not try to figure him out, whether by one person or by six, or seven depends on how you count, and just listen to some of his great lyrics.
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