A multi-layered meditation on the semiotics of celebrity, I'm Not There is simultaneously about and not about Bob Dylan—and somehow manages to perfectly capture his aura. The Pirandellian six characters in search of an author include a cross-dressing replicant (Blanchett), a manufactured folkie (Bale), a method actor (Ledger), an aging western outlaw (Gere), a young and black Woody Guthrie impersonator (Franklin), and the French symbolist poet Rimbaud (Whishaw). "Among its many achievements, Mr. Haynes's film hurls a Molotov cocktail through the facade of the Hollywood biopic factory, exploding the literal-minded, anti-intellectual assumptions that guide even the most admiring cinematic explorations of artists' lives. Rather than turn out yet another dutiful, linear chronicle of childhood trauma and grown-up substance abuse, Mr. Haynes has produced a dizzying palimpsest of images and styles, in which his subject appears in the form of six different people." (NY Times) Blanchett won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination for her pitch-perfect mimicry drawn from the Dylan of Don't Look Back. more at imnotthere-movie.com 35mm Cinemascope
2007, color, 2 hours 17 minutes, USA