I'm Not There
I'm Not There - Poster
This Film is great from start to finish. Each stage of Bob Dylans life is represented. Jack (Bale) Represents the early stages of Greenich Village. Jack represents when Dylan begins to sing Folk and stands up for what he believes in. He writes protest songs and people begin to fall in love with his ability to move a crowd with his ballads and his hopes and dreams. After Jack falls from the top we meet Robbie (Ledger) an actor who portrays Jack Collins in a film and who later falls in love at a coffee shop. He ends up married and on the road a lot thus representing the struggles in Bob Dylans life to maintain a family. After life begins to build up and Robbie spends more time on the road we are introduced to Jude(Blanchett) and this character is the one that opens the film up. This character brings the film to new horizons showing us the artist side and creativity to the person Bob Dylan was. Jude begins to write protest songs but is entirely misunderstood. He is thrown into a load of situations involving a poet named Allen (David Cross) and his loved by a groupie (Michelle Williams).When Jude begins to struggle to find meaning and happiness we are brought back to Jack who is found Jesus. After this we are introduced to the final version of Dylan who in the film is named Billy. Billy (Richard Gere) lives in the woods and is secluded from all forms of public relations except for small town life. He lives here happily for twenty years but of course he is brought back into the public life by the threat of a new six lane highway that will tear his town apart. He then escapes on a train and then the last we see is Jude singing a song which ultimately represents the complete turn in which the life of Bob Dylan took.
Great memorable characters are hard to create especially if the are trying to mimic someone that was real. Christian Bale did a sincere and honest job as the early Dylan bought no one really bought into his role. He set up for the main parts of the movie. Heath Ledger came in and took over for Christian Bale playing an entirely different Bob Dylan. Heath did an awesome job playing a struggling family man also trying to juggle his career. So much anticipation was riding on Heath because this was the type of film that he could challenge himself as an actor. Heath did an awesome job and this is one of my fave of his movies in his career. Heath had an awesome career, that was cut way to short, but the films in which he choose were spectacular and visually appealing to all people to looking to watch a sophisticated movie. Cate Blanchett stole the show which is not surprising to me at all.She did the best job of sounding and portraying the way Bob Dylan actually was throughout the mid sixties.Cate was a good addition to the film playing a man but if you did not know then and even if you did this role was still one of the best roles of the year. Bruce Greenwood , Michelle Williams and David Cross were the actors who were hired to fill in the missing pieces and they did just that. There characters were little, but held meaning and each one of them did a good job to secure that the films plot held strong and that the people understood the life of Bob Dylan.
The settings were appealing and the story stood out. The characters who all happened to represent Bob Dylan still all came off the screen with there own personality traits that help structure the plot. It was fun to watch the characters intertwine and never once did any of the representations of Bob Dylan come together on screen. Awesome movie, one the best biopics that one can watch in recent years. The film was almost 2 hrs and 20 minutes but with all the different characters it kept the audience into it. If they would have had the same actor run around playing Dylan then the film would have gotten boring. But since they had characters that we all know represented Dylan but held different names it gave the audience that feel that maybe it was not always Bob Dylan but the struggles just six different people.
Bob Dylan is well respected and a lot of people know who he is. This film is meant for the people who have heard about his life and know what he has accomplished. If you know nothing about Bob Dylan you may still enjoy this film but it may cause a little more confusion. Still an all around good film and one that all true music fans would love.
