Todd Haynes’ ‘I’m Not There’ Understood That Bob Dylan Is So Much More Than What ‘A Complete Unknown’ Shows Us
Harrison Richlin
“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”
This quote from Bob Dylan, attributed to an interview he gave to the now defunct Beat Magazine in May 1965, might as well be an encapsulation of not just Dylan’s career as one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time, but also his life as a whole. For as much as Dylan’s songs, especially his early work, seem to be tied up in spirit of the times in which they were released, at they’re core, they represent the singer’s own journey, sense of observation, and influences, from Woody Guthrie to Jesus Christ, as well as his personal desires as a constant wanderer. At the moment this quote was given, Dylan himself was breaking from the folk traditions that birthed his entry into the popular culture and redefining himself as an electric musician. From here, Dylan would continue spending his life as an enigma, letting his music and the way in which he performed it serve as the only way of understanding the man behind the harmonica.
Few filmmakers have tried to crack the myth of Dylan, but those who have use two elements to anchor their narratives and reach to the core of the artist: His music and his experience, both real and imagined. In James Mangold‘s recently released “A Complete Unknown,” which creates a fable out of Dylan’s rise to fame during the folk revival of the 1960s, Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan as a musical prodigy whose gift forces him to mature beyond the limit of what he’s fully comfortable with. Chalamet’s Dylan doesn’t sing protest music because he actually cares about the issues, but because he just likes protesting and sees everyone else does too. Once he realizes the expectations he’s laid out for his captive audience and even those he loves however, all he starts to care about is upending their perceptions and creating something new. He’s not concerned with hurting feelings or making an impact, he just doesn’t want to belong to anyone but himself and the music. If the whole purpose of his being has to become about remaining inaccessible, then so be it.
In contrast, Todd Haynes‘ 2007 multi-character musical drama “I’m Not There” takes a less literal approach to capturing Dylan, breaking apart his many eras, personalities, and inspirations into a non-linear set of vignettes featuring Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Richard Gere, and more. If “A Complete Unknown” is a dramatized retelling of a brief, but definitive moment in Dylan’s life and career, “I’m Not There” is more of an objective analysis mixed with subtle commentary. In fact, the only mention of Dylan directly, outside of song credits and concert footage shown at the end of the film, is a caption at the beginning that reads, “inspired by the music and the many lives of Bob Dylan.” In this way, “I’m Not There” is not so much about Dylan, as it is an artistic interpretation of how Dylan might be understood — though multiple sections do feature reference to moments played out in full in “A Complete Unknown.”
Our first access point to Dylan in “I’m Not There” is the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (Whishaw), a transgressive writer whose use of surrealism would go on to influence generations of modern literature, but who in the film serves to decode the nature of a man like Dylan. Rimbaud’s remarks are interspersed throughout and played as responses to interrogators, an allusion to the public’s own need to understand the genius of others, but also a way of giving the audience a bird’s-eye-view on how a man like Dylan thinks. Whereas most are bound by cause-and-effect, thinkers like Rimbaud and Dylan view life in terms of fate and chaos, thereby forced, one way or another, to live a life in hiding. The next angle on Dylan comes in the form of an 11 year-old Black boy traveling the country by boxcar during the late 1950s/early ’60s, going by the name of Woody Guthrie and singing songs about trade unionism like it was the ’30s. As an allusion to Dylan, this character captures a similar fragment of his life covered in “A Complete Unknown,” albeit in a completely different way. Haynes’ interpretation of Dylan’s early years and obsession with Guthrie was that he was trying to fit into a time that had passed and in this sense, will always feel like he needs to run from the present.
In “A Complete Unknown,” this is shown directly as the film begins with Dylan arriving in New York City, transported via hitch-hiking, leaving his real name, Robert Zimmerman, behind in Minnesota and starting anew as a supposed former carnival worker who picked up a few chords on the guitar from cowboys who travelled with the group. Its a fanciful story that many see through immediately, but it doesn’t stop Dylan’s idol, the real Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) — bedridden in a hospital in New Jersey and unable to speak due to his Huntington’s Disease — from being moved by the young man’s soulful voice. Guthrie’s good friend and compatriot, folk singer Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), can also see the light and is quick to take Dylan under his wing, perhaps sensing Dylan’s youth can give folk music the jolt it needs to inspire and change the world like it once did. Little does he know just how powerful that jolt will truly be and how Dylan’s image will soon overpower the message.
“I’m Not There” portrays this section of Dylan’s life, as well as his later conversion to Born-Again Christianity, through a character named Jack Rollins (Bale), shown via documentary footage that tracks his rise on the Greenwich Village folk music scene in the 1960s and the experiences that led to him turning his back on the protest movement. Differing from the thread played out in “A Complete Unknown,” rather than “going electric,” Rollins goes into hiding and remerges years later as Father John, an ordained minister who only performs gospel music. This plays into a later moment in Dylan’s life when he did in fact convert to Evangelical Christianity, a choice many fans felt clashed with the iconoclast personality he’d spent years establishing, but that, yet again, proves Dylan’s own desired anachronism when it comes to people thinking they have a handle on him. Another element featured in the Rollins section is a fictionalized dissection of the relationship between Dylan and frequent collaborator Joan Baez, here named Alice Fabian (Julianne Moore).
While “A Complete Unknown” lets Dylan and Baez’ connection, both intimately and on stage, speak for itself, by allowing an older version of Baez/Fabian to communicate her understanding of what they shared together, “I’m Not There” offers us a more rounded look into their dynamic and the emotional complexities of being the only two people at that point in time who actually understood what the other was going through. Though Monica Barbaro’s portrayal of Baez in “A Complete Unknown,” particularly her singing and guitar playing, managed to be both grounded and transcendent, she’s never given the space to be a character separate from Dylan’s trajectory, which undercuts the talent and commitment the real figure brought to the movement for social justice. Another romantic relationship given short-shrift in “A Complete Unknown” that is given more shape in “I’m Not There” is that of Dylan and his first serious girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, featured alongside the singer on the iconic cover of his second studio album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”
Referred to as Sylvie in “A Complete Unknown” and played by Elle Fanning, Rotolo was an activist her entire life and influenced much of Dylan’s political leanings and music during the early 1960s, but Mangold does little to acknowledge that impact beyond using Sylvie as a muse-like figure for Dylan, her only purpose to provide a wholesome, emotional contrast to his selfish elusiveness. “I’m Not There” lends Rotolo’s narrative a deeper complexity, while at the same time tying it into future relationships Dylan couldn’t manage to maintain, including with his first wife, Sara Dylan, née Lownds. Diving even further into the meta-textual, Haynes imbeds his own version of “A Complete Unknown” into his film by casting Ledger as an actor portraying Bale’s Rollins in a biopic called “Grains of Sand.” During production, Ledger’s Robbie Clark meets Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), an artist living in Greenwich Village near where “Grains of Sand” is shooting and enjoying a lifestyle not too dissimilar from the one the film is aiming to depict. The two fall for each other and marry, but when the film becomes a hit, launching Clark’s career, success changes him, just as it did for Dylan, forcing Claire to wonder if he’s really worth following.
Though Rotolo is less directly acknowledged than she is in “A Complete Unknown,” in including the essence of her character in Gainsbourg’s hybrid figure, “I’m Not There” manages to get to the root of why Dylan’s romances remain relatively short-lived while at the same time emphasizing the autonomy and strength of the women Dylan chose to surround himself with. Perhaps this is why Haynes, in depicting the period following Dylan’s move to electric and subsequent tour of England featured in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary “Don’t Look Back,” chose to cast female actress Cate Blanchett in the male role of Dylan stand-in Jude Quinn. Shot in black-and-white, just as with Pennebaker’s doc, this sequence shows Dylan as a wild animal desperate to remain uncaged, seeking out solace in everyone from The Beatles to Allen Ginsberg, but faced with an onslaught of criticism he can’t seem to shake.
Also featured in Quinn’s thread, similar to “A Complete Unknown,” is a depiction of what happened at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan chose to play electric, angering organizers and fans alike. Even Seeger, Dylan’s mentor, can’t abide this revolution and threatens to cut the speakers’ wiring with an axe before being calmed by his wife. Though it’s played seriously, for modern audiences who’ve been exposed to much crazier concerts, some even in person, this moment in “A Complete Unknown” comes across as quite silly. With “I’m Not There” however, in trying to communicate the impact of Dylan’s shift to electric rather than portray it directly, Haynes is able to draw out both humor and seriousness by showing Quinn and his band pull out automatic weapons on stage and fire at the audience. It may be an artsier way of highlighting how caustic Dylan’s actions were, but way more effective in getting its point across than dramatizing the real events. It’s especially discouraging considering Dylan’s relationship with Seeger is one of the strongest arcs featured in “A Complete Unknown,” but ultimately underserved by this reactionary conclusion.
Though Seeger doesn’t factor into “I’m Not There” in any direct fashion — not even a hybrid or referential character — the notion of Dylan’s brush with the mentor/mentee relationship is hinted at in the final character of Haynes’ vignette piece, Billy McCarty (Richard Gere), based on the real life outlaw, Billy the Kid. True Dylan-heads will know that in 1973, the singer/songwriter wrote the music to the Sam Peckinpah western “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. Though maligned at the time and recut by the studio removing some of Dylan’s songs, the film has since found a new following and appreciation after being re-edited to match Peckinpah’s vision. Based on a true story, it depicts the fall-out between two outlaws, one who wishes to maintain their freewheeling ways and the other, courted by the legal establishment into becoming a Sheriff and bringing his former compatriot to justice. In collaborating with Peckinpah, perhaps Dylan saw a bit of himself and Seeger in this story — a point Haynes draws out further in “I’m Not There.”
As McCarty, Gere is vagabond at the end of a long and dusty road, but finally at home and in hiding in the rural area of Riddle, Missouri. That is until ol’ Pat Garrett, now Commissioner, decides to demolish the town and place a highway in its stead. It may be reading a bit too much into it, but there is a line to be drawn in viewing this as a metaphor for the direction Seeger was trying to force Dylan to go despite Dylan needing to be guided by his own compass. On a more macro-level, McCarty and Garrett’s dilemma signifies Dylan’s own struggle with modernity, always feeling out of time and out of place, but ultimately, for better and for worse, allowing that to become part of his character. After being jailed for killing Garrett, McMarty is even freed by a man named Homer — a not-so-subtle allusion to history’s original poet — and sent back on the run, forced to face yet another odyssey on the path to freedom. For many, these details may pass unnoticed, thereby making the overall experience less-than-satisfying, but for those with even a small knowledge of Dylan and his life, “I’m Not There” opens the door to an even deeper understanding of his life and music while still honoring its untraceable nature.
In this sense, “A Complete Unknown” may actually be a vital tool in fully comprehending “I’m Not There” for those without a familiarity of Dylan’s beginnings. “Don’t Look Back” would also be a useful watch, but going in blind, with no knowledge of who Dylan was, his music, or his personal history, “I’m Not There” still offers a more detailed, complex portrait of the artist than “A Complete Unknown.” Instead, what “A Complete Unknown” does offer is an introduction for a new generation, as well as a celebration for an older one, and while it may lean heavy on playing the hits vs. understanding Dylan further, it does ground the much-lauded musician in a very human way, particularly during the few scenes involving Guthrie. On the flip side, “I’m Not There” has no interest in grounding Dylan, but instead wishes to elevate his life as not just one tall tale, but a string of them, all lined up in contrast to one another, drawing conclusions, while remaining entirely open-ended. Like the man himself, it’s a film that refuses conformity, but can’t help but be tied to a foundational tradition.
“A Complete Unknown” from Searchlight Pictures is now in theaters.
