The typical formula for music biopics is tragedy, success, drugs, and then recovery. However, I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan "biopic" is a horse of an entirely different colour. In fact, the name Bob Dylan is never spoken once throughout the film as the six different characters representing different aspects and phases of Dylan's life and career are given names like Jude, Jack, and Billy. This fractured approach to the life and times of Bob Dylan is itself an existentialist view of the man's life, for by approaching his life as not one knowable narrative, we instead see Dylan as spectrum of thoughts and ideas. Beyond the existentialist macro approach the film takes, many of the incarnations of Dylan in the film act as rebellious existential warriors, particularly the Jude incarnation played brilliantly by Cate Blanchett. This section of the film sees Dylan determined to tear down the image of himself created by the media. Realising the Idol he has become in certain circles as a dangerous ideal that would falsify his existence, Jude becomes haunted by the weight of the artificial image of, Dylan the Hero. In order to maintain some since of authenticity, Jude is left with one option: rebel against and destroy the Dylan that came before, building a Dylan free of clichés and expectations. The man who went electric at the Newport Folk Festival we're sure would approve.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
