| | | "Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw Are All Bob Dylan."
I'm Not There is an unconventional journey into the life and times of Bob Dylan. Six actors portray Dylan as a series of shifting personae--from the public to the private to the fantastical--weaving together a rich and colorful portrait of this ever-elusive American icon.
"...hurls a Molotov cocktail through the facade of the Hollywood biopic factory." A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"Brilliantly strange, often funny and ultimately heartbreaking film." David Gates, Newsweek
"What Haynes has essentially done is create a film that is a Bob Dylan song, one of his best." Jeff Beresford-Howe, Film Threat
"I'm Not There lets you hear it again, more majestically than ever." Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"This film insists on being taken on its own terms -- the sort of demand, in other words, that defines the best art." Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian
"One of the most inventive and joyous movies of the year." Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com
"A loopy, surreal, beguiling collage of a film, the writer-director's meta-biopic embraces its subject." Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
Editor's Note
Todd Haynes (VELVET GOLDMINE, FAR FROM HEAVEN) delivers this dazzling, experimental take on the life of popular music's most revered and enigmatic artist: Bob Dylan. In keeping with the impossible-to-pin-down nature of Dylan himself, Haynes chose to cast six different actors to portray several incarnations of the groundbreaking troubadour. The result is a challenging, sprawling work that spans several decades and genres. Woody (Marcus Carl Franklin) is a young black child with a folk music obsession; Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) is an upstart folksinger whose protest songs have ignited an entire generation; Arthur (Ben Wishaw) is a Rimbaud-esque figure who has begun to embrace a new form of lyrical poetry; Robbie (Heath Ledger) is a well-known actor whose marriage to the lovely Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) crumbles under the weight of his lifestyle; Billy (Richard Gere) is a slippery frontiersman who echoes Dylan's infatuation with the Old West and American folklore; and, finally, there is the substance-abusing, confrontational Jude (Cate Blanchett), who represents Dylan in the turbulent mid-1960s.Much in the same way that Dylan appropriated a vast array of musical styles to create his own vernacular, Haynes does the same thing with I'M NOT THERE, using his expansive knowledge of movie history to pay homage to a variety of movements and genres (Godard, Fellini, Lester, etc.). The typically extraordinary cinematographer Edward Lachman outdoes even himself this time around, incorporating so many different visual styles that it's impossible to decide which is the most beautiful. While the cast all fare well in their roles, it is Cate Blanchett who runs away with the picture, proving once again that she is one of the finest actors the movies have ever seen.
| Features | Audio: English | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: Spanish |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | I'm Not There (Two Disc Collector's Edition) - DVD Review By: Ed Perkis - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 5/15/2008 2:32 PM | | The musical biopic has been all the rage in recent years, so much so that there has already been a fairly decent parody of the genre, Walk Hard. Writer/director Todd Haynes decided that iconic singer/songwriter Bob Dylan would be less well served by a straightforward linear retelling of his life story. Haynes, instead, puts together a film about Dylan in the style of a Dylan song; poetic, time shifting, ever changing, stream of consciousness... ...read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: WEINSTEIN COMPANY |
| Release Date: 1/27/2009 |
| Running Time: 135 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2007 | | Catalog ID: 81090 | | UPC: 00796019810906 | | Number of Discs: 2 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Nominee (2008) | | | British Academy Awards, Cate Blanchett, Best Supporting Actress | |
Winner (2008) | | | Golden Globe, Cate Blanchett, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | | | Independent Spirit, Cate Blanchett, Best Supporting Female | | | Independent Spirit, Todd Haynes, et. al., Robert Altman Award | |
Nominee (2008) | | | Independent Spirit, Todd Haynes, Best Director | | | Independent Spirit, Christine Vachon, et. al., Best Feature | | | Independent Spirit, Marcus Carl Franklin, Best Supporting Male | | | Oscar, Cate Blanchett, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role | | | Screen Actors Guild, Cate Blanchett, Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role | |
Winner (2007) | | | Venice Film Festival, Todd Haynes, 'CinemAvvenire' Award - Best Film | | | Venice Film Festival, Todd Haynes, Special Jury Prize | | | Venice Film Festival, Cate Blanchett, Volpi Cup - Best Actress |
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| | Professional Reviews | Box Office
"Haynes executes a fascinating fictional riff on the many faces of Bob Dylan....[He] lets his kaleidoscopic visual imagination dictate the narrative flow." 12/01/2007 p.54Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "Carl Franklin is a sensation, Heath Leger outstanding...and Blanchett thrilling..." 01/01/2008 p.48 Entertainment Weekly
"I'M NOT THERE is a fantasia, a tell-all, a biopic that's all high points, a folk-rock essay, and a dream, all wrapped into one. It plays like the headiest musical ever made." -- Grade: A 11/30/2007 p.112-113 New York Times
"[An] incandescent rebus of a movie inspired by Mr. Dylan's life and music....Among its many achievements, Mr. Haynes's film hurls a Molotov cocktail through the facade of the Hollywood biopic factory..." 11/21/2007 Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "It's a feast for the eyes, the ears and the Dylanologist scratching around our minds and hearts....Blanchett extends the possibilities of acting. You won't see a better example of interpretive art this year..." 11/29/2007 p.89 Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "Haynes has captured a sense of the strange figure who changed America..." 01/01/2008 p.52 Sight and Sound
"I'M NOT THERE is airy, lithe, witty, never still -- and, for all its frenzy and flickered darkness, now and then strangely serene." 01/01/2008 p.73-74 Uncut
5 stars out of 5 -- "Haynes gets everything right and the result is electrifying -- an audaciously prismatic portrait of Dylan....An amazing film..." 01/01/2008 p.124-125 Los Angeles Times
"There are plenty of things to admire....Its artistic and intellectual ambitions, for starters....This movie burrows into your mind and stays there..." 11/21/2007 Rolling Stone
Ranked #9 in Rolling Stone's "10 Best Movies Of 2007" -- "[A] biopic that shatters all the rules of biopics." 12/27/2007 p.121 ReelViews 6 of 10
To capture the essence of a sometimes pretentious, occasionally unfathomable artist, Haynes has made a sometimes pretentious, occasionally unfathomable film. Dylan fans will love it for the music, but that's about all the production has going for it. In the end, many viewers will leave with two impressions: the music is as good as it always has been and Dylan is a bigger asshole than one might have suspected...For those who don't make the connection between the actors and their supposed subject, the preponderance of Dylan music should be more than a clue. At least we don't have to endure the over-the-top song-and-dance numbers of Across the Universe...Haynes is not trying to make a mainstream motion picture. He isn't attempting to generate a narrative. He is throwing up vignettes and hoping that the random collage results in something approaching a character study. This kind of experimental technique might be fine for a film school project, but it falls short of justifying a $10 ticket expenditure. There are those who will applaud what Haynes and his actors have accomplished, and I can understand its appeal on an intellectual level. But I am not a supporter of film without form or art without structure; those who share that opinion may find this to be as tedious an experience as I did. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
"I'm Not There" is an attempt to consider the contradictions of Bob Dylan by building itself upon contradictions. Maybe that's the only way to do it. If you made a biopic with Dylan played by the same actor all the way through, it might become the portrait of a shape-shifting schizophrenic. Todd Haynes' approach is to create six or seven Dylans, depending on how you count, and use six actors to play them. This way, each Dylan is consistent on his own terms, and the life as a whole need not hold together...By creating this kaleidoscope of Dylans, Haynes makes a portrait not of the singer but of our perceptions. There is a parallel in Oliver Stone's "JFK," which I think was intended not as a solution of the Kennedy assassination but as a record of our paranoia about it. And there is another work that seems relevant: Francois Girard's brilliant 1993 film "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," which uses actors to re-create a series of real and imagined scenes in the life of the reclusive Canadian pianist...Coming away from "I'm Not There," we have, first of all, heard some great music...We've seen six gifted actors challenged by playing facets of a complete man. We've seen a daring attempt at biography as collage...And we have been left not one step closer to comprehending Bob Dylan, which is as it should be. - Roger Ebert
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