Im Not There ( 1 of 8)

What “Nashville” was to the Bi-Centennial, “I’m Not There” is to the Millennium.

Watching it is a crash course in what it has meant to be an American over the last 50 years. The movies, music, the politics, the myths, the romance, the wars, the innocence and the experience of nothing less than life itself. ……: That is what Todd Haynes’ movie is all about.

Or part of what it’s all about. “I’m Not There” is a film of contradictions. No matter what one says about any of it, the opposite will also be true. It is parody, fan fiction, alternate universe science fiction……Like Dylan himself, it is anything you want it to be…and also the mirror image of whatever you think you see.

Just as one needn’t to be an Irish Catholic to enjoy Joyce’s “Ulysses,” an obsession with Bob Dylan is not a pre-requisite to the pleasures of the movie. It helps, though, if you want to get the jokes. And “I’m Not There” is full of them. It is the funniest, and most fun, American movie in decades. It is also a deeply sad meditation on the temporal sweep of human commitment and change.

Considering all this, one would expect to find reams and reams of fascinating commentary in the hundreds of articles already written on the film. But I have found almost nothing worth reading in the whole pile. I don’t think it is the fault of the writers, but of the formats in which such writers labor. With 10-inch space limits, a reviewer can barely introduce the principal actors and their roles before it is time for a summing up.

The media cannot contain this film, any more than it can contain Bob Dylan.

Then again, Dylan is not really the subject of the film. The seven characters so portrayed are as much you or I as they are Bob Dylan. But to deny the film is about Bob Dylan is as wrong as to believe that it is about him.

So, in my attempt to write something about this film that might be worth reading, I’m going to break it down into seven pieces centered on each of the seven characters. Please comment at will, as I am hoping this will be more a conversation than a holding forth.