I'm Not There

2007 film by Todd Haynes

I'm Not There is a 2007 musical drama film directed by Todd Haynes, and co written by Haynes and Oren Moverman. An experimental biographical film, it is inspired by the life and music of American singer songwriter Bob Dylan, with six actors depicting different facets of Dylan's public personas: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger (his final film to be released during his lifetime), and Ben Whishaw. A caption at the start of the film declares it to be "inspired by the music and the many lives of Bob Dylan"; this is the only mention of Dylan in the film apart from song credits, and his only appearance in it is concert footage from 1966 shown during the film's final moments. I'm Not There tells its story using non traditional narrative techniques, intercutting the storylines of six different Dylan inspired characters. The title of the film is taken from the 1967 Dylan Basement Tape recording of "I'm Not There", a song that had not been officially released until it appeared on the film's soundtrack album. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its acting (particularly Blanchett's), directing, and musical score. It appeared on multiple publications' top ten films lists for 2007. Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

I'm Not There uses a nonlinear narrative, shifting between six characters in separate storylines "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". Each character represents a different facet of Dylan's public persona: poet (Arthur Rimbaud), prophet (Jack Rollins/Father John), outlaw (Billy McCarty), fake (Woody Guthrie), "rock and roll martyr" (Jude Quinn), and "star of electricity" (Robbie Clark). Production notes published by distributor The Weinstein Company explain that the film "dramatizes the life and music of Bob Dylan as a series of shifting personae, each performed by a different actor—poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock and roll martyr, born again Christian—six identities braided together, six organs pumping through one life story."

19 year old Arthur Rimbaud is questioned by interrogators. His cryptic responses are interspersed throughout the film, including remarks on fatalism, the nature of poets, "seven simple rules for life in hiding," and chaos.

In 1959, an 11 year old African American boy calling himself Woody Guthrie is freighthopping through the Midwestern United States. Carrying a guitar in a case bearing the slogan "this machine kills fascists", he plays blues music and sings about topics such as trade unionism. One African American woman advises him to sing about the issues of his own time instead. Woody is attacked by hobos and nearly drowns, but is rescued by a white couple who take him in. They are impressed with his musical talents, but Woody runs off when they receive a telephone call from a juvenile corrections center in Minnesota telling them he is an escaped fugitive. Upon learning that the real Woody Guthrie is deathly ill, Dylan travels to New Jersey to visit Guthrie in the hospital.

The career of folk musician Jack Rollins is framed as a documentary film, told by interviewees including folk singer Alice Fabian. Jack becomes a star of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, praised by fans for his protest songs. He signs to Columbia Records, but in 1963, just as the Vietnam War is escalating, he stops singing protest songs and turns away from folk music, believing that neither affects real social or political change. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jack gets drunk at a ceremony where he is receiving an award from a civil rights organization. Remarking in his acceptance speech that he saw something of himself in Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, he is booed and derided by the audience. He goes into hiding, and in 1974 enters a bible study course in Stockton, California, and emerges a born again Christian, denouncing his past and becoming an ordained minister performing gospel music under the name "Father John".

Robbie Clark is a 22 year old actor who plays Jack Rollins in the 1965 biographical film Grain of Sand. During filming in Greenwich Village in January 1964, he falls in love with French artist Claire, and they soon marry. Grain of Sand is a hit and Robbie becomes a star, but their relationship is strained and Claire observes Robbie flirting with other women. She is particularly offended when, during an argument in 1968 over whether the evils of the world can be changed, he opines that women can never be poets. Eventually Robbie moves out of their house, then goes to London for four months to film a thriller and has an affair with his female co star. Richard Nixon's January 1973 announcement of the Paris Peace Accords inspires Claire to ask for a divorce. She gains custody of their two daughters, but allows Robbie to take them on a boating trip.

Jude Quinn is a popular former folk singer whose performance with a full band and electric guitars at a New England jazz and folk festival outrages his fans, who accuse him of selling out. Travelling to London, Jude is asked by journalist Keenan Jones if he has become disillusioned or thinks folk music has failed to achieve its goals of sociopolitical change. Jude is attacked by a hotel employee, hangs out with the Beatles, encounters his former lover Coco Rivington, and meets poet Allen Ginsberg, who suggests that Jude "sold out to God." Interviewing Jude, Keenan notes that Jude's songs are being used as recruitment tools by the Black Panther Party and opines that Jude refuses to feel deeply about anything while simultaneously being very self conscious; Jude is offended and walks out of the interview. At a concert performing "Ballad of a Thin Man", Jude is booed and called a "Judas" by the audience. Keenan reveals on television that, despite his claims of a rough and tumble vagabond past, Jude is actually Aaron Jacob Edelstein, the suburban, middle class, educated son of a Brookline, Massachusetts department store owner. Faced with a long string of upcoming European tour dates, Jude spirals into drug use and is killed in a motorcycle accident.

Outlaw Billy McCarty, believed to have been killed by Pat Garrett, lives in hiding in rural Riddle, Missouri. Learning that Commissioner Garrett plans to demolish the town to build a highway, which has caused several townspeople to commit suicide, Billy confronts Garrett. Garrett recognizes Billy as the outlaw Billy the Kid and has him thrown in jail. He is broken out by his friend Homer and hops into a boxcar on a passing train, where he finds Woody's guitar. As he rides away, he remarks on the nature of freedom and identity. The film concludes with footage of Dylan playing a harmonica solo during a live performance in 1966.

These six characters represent different aspects of Dylan's life and music. The page Haynes submitted began with a quote from Arthur Rimbaud: "I is someone else", and then continued:

If a film were to exist in which the breadth and flux of a creative life could be experienced, a film that could open up, as opposed to consolidating, what we think we already know walking in, it could never be within the tidy arc of a master narrative. The structure of such a film would have to be a fractured one, with numerous openings and a multitude of voices, with its prime strategy being one of refraction, not condensation. Imagine a film splintered between six separate faces – old men, young men, women, children – each standing in for spaces in a single life. A further Dylan based character named Charlie, based on Charlie Chaplin, was dropped before filming began. Haynes described him as "a little tramp, coming to Greenwich Village and performing feats of magic and being an arbiter of peace between the beats and the folkies."

The film within a film, Grain of Sand, is not only important for the plot of I'm Not There but also for the film's connection to Bob Dylan's life. Larry Gross suggests that Grain of Sand actor Robbie may be the film's most accurate portrayal of Dylan despite being "a fictional actor playing a fictional alternative version of a real person" because of his tumultuous relationship with Claire. Gross also notes parallels between Robbie and Claire's ultimately failed marriage and Dylan's relationship with Suze Rotolo, claiming that Claire's character seems to be a portrayal of Rotolo, especially considering the shot in I'm Not There that mimicks the photo of Rotolo and Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

The film features numerous songs by Dylan, performed by Dylan and also recordings by other artists. The songs feature as both foreground—performed by artists on camera (e. g. "Goin' to Acapulco", "Pressing On")—and background accompaniment to the action. A notable non Dylan song in the movie is "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" by The Monkees, which plays in the background of a party scene set in London.

In January 2007, The Weinstein Company acquired U. S distribution rights to the film. I'm Not There had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2007. The film went onto screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, London Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. The film opened in limited release in the United States on November 21, 2007. It was then released in Germany on February 28, 2008, by Tobis Film.

I'm Not There was released on DVD as a 2 disc special edition on May 6, 2008. The DVD special features include audio commentary from Haynes, deleted scenes, featurettes, a music video, audition tapes for certain cast members, trailers, and a Bob Dylan filmography and discography. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Anthony DeCurtis wrote that casting six different actors, including a woman and an African American child, to play Dylan was "a preposterous idea, the sort of self consciously 'audacious'—or reassuringly multi culti—gambit that, for instance, doomed the Broadway musical based on the life and music of John Lennon. Yet in I'm Not There, the strategy works brilliantly." He especially praised Blanchett:

Her performance is a wonder, and not simply because, as Jude Quinn, she inhabits the twitchy, amphetamine fired Dylan of 1965–66 with unnerving accuracy. Casting a woman in this role reveals a dimension to the acerbic Dylan of this era that has rarely been noted Blanchett's translucent skin, delicate fingers, slight build, and pleading eyes all suggest the previously invisible vulnerability and fear that fueled Dylan's lacerating anger. It's hard to imagine that any male actor, or any less gifted female actor for that matter, could have lent such rich texture to the role. Several other critics also praised Blanchett's performance as the mid 1960s Dylan. Newsweek magazine described Blanchett as "so convincing and intense that you shrink back in your seat when she fixes you with her gaze." The Charlotte Observer called Blanchett "miraculously close to the 1966 Dylan." Todd McCarthy of Variety, concluded that the film was well made, but was ultimately a speciality event for Dylan fans, with little mainstream appeal. He wrote: "Dylan freaks and scholars will have the most fun with I'm Not There, and there will inevitably be innumerable dissertations on the ways Haynes has both reflected and distorted reality, mined and manipulated the biographical record and otherwise had a field day with the essentials, as well as the esoterica, of Dylan's life. All of this will serve to inflate the film's significance by ignoring its lack of more general accessibility. In the end, it's a specialists' event."

The character of Jack Rollins depicts Dylan during his acoustic, "protest" phase which includes The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a Changin'. Rollins's speech mentioning Lee Harvey Oswald quotes from a speech Dylan made when receiving the Tom Paine Award from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in December 1963. Pastor John embodies Dylan's "born again" period when he recorded Slow Train Coming and Saved. Jude Quinn "closely follows Dylan's mid sixties adventures" and his "dangerous game propels him into existential breakdown." Quinn is seen at a folk festival performing a rock version of "Maggie's Farm" to outraged folk music fans; Dylan performed this song at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, which provoked booing and controversy. Some of the questions Quinn is asked at a London press conference are quotes from Dylan's KQED press conference in San Francisco in December 1965. The sped up film speed in the scene of Quinn gambolling with The Beatles echoes the style of Richard Lester's depiction in A Hard Day's Night. Quinn's reply, "How can I answer that if you've got the nerve to ask me? ", to Bruce Greenwood's character comes from a similar response Dylan made to a reporter from Time magazine in Dont Look Back, Pennebaker's documentary about Dylan's 1965 English tour. The scene in which Jude is called "Judas" by an audience member is based on a May 17, 1966, concert in Manchester, captured on Dylan's album Live 1966. The Jude Quinn character's death reflects a serious motorcycle accident Dylan had in 1966. The Woody character refers to Dylan's youthful obsession with folk singer Woody Guthrie. The slogan "This machine kills fascists" on Woody's guitar case mimics a label Guthrie famously had on his guitar. Billy the Kid refers to Dylan playing the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah's 1973 western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Billy's final monologue in the film echoes remarks Dylan made in a 1997 interview with David Gates of Newsweek: "I don't think I'm tangible to myself. I mean, I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me." The character Robbie Clark is an actor who portrays Jack Rollins in a biographical film and becomes as famous as the person he portrays; he experiences the stresses of a disintegrating marriage, reflecting Dylan's personal life around the time of 1975's Blood on the Tracks. The scene in which Robbie and Claire run romantically through the streets of New York re enacts the cover of the 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan which depicts Dylan arm in arm with his then girlfriend Suze Rotolo in Greenwich Village. Dylan was divorced from his first wife, Sara Dylan, in June 1977 and the divorce involved court battles over the custody of their children. In his production notes, Haynes wrote that Robbie and Claire's relationship is "doomed to a long stubborn protraction (not unlike Vietnam, which it parallels)." Keenan Jones, the name of the fictional reporter who investigates Jude Quinn and Pat Garrett, echoes Dylan's song "Ballad of a Thin Man" with its chorus: "Something is happening here/ And you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?" The character's revelation of Jude's past is based on a hostile profile of Dylan published in the October 1963 issue of Newsweek, revealing that he was originally named Robert Zimmerman and implying that he had lied about his middle class origins. The character Alice Fabian is a singer who resembles folk singer Joan Baez. The description of Coco Rivington as "Andy's new bird" suggests this character is modelled on Edie Sedgwick, a socialite and actress within Andy Warhol's circle.