Something Is Happening Here But You Don’t Know What It Is

Stephen Malkmus and the Million Dollar Bashers “Ballad of a Thin Man” - David Edelstein’s review of Todd Haynes’ new film I’m Not There in the most recent issue of New York Magazine may be positive, but in complaining that Haynes is more concerned with deconstructing Bob Dylan than getting inside his head, he clues us in to just how little he understood what the movie is actually about, i.e., not the guy who sleeps and eats and DJs on satellite radio. It’s about the cultural representation of Dylan, and as such, it’s more about us than it is about him. Not to undersell the film’s substance, but when you boil down all the things that I’m Not There has to say about Dylan in particular and art in general, it’s essentially about how we turn artists into icons, and the way the mythology that we create around them can take on a life and meaning that is far greater than the person, and sometimes even the work itself.

Haynes splits Dylan into six characters, none of whom are called Bob Dylan. (The name is never once uttered in the film.) Only half of the actors resemble the man, and the one who is most clearly evocative of his actual style and mannerisms is a woman in drag. It’s important that it’s drag, by the way. Cate Blanchett’s performance as the Dylan of Don’t Look Back is meant to be an over-the-top, fabulous caricature of the artist at his most iconic, and it’s the representation that is most charged with transgressive sexuality — both his own, and what Blanchett claims for herself as she occupies his persona. Blanchett’s Dylan is my favorite, mainly because she is standing in for the version of the man I appreciate the most: The “pop” Dylan; the cynical, frustrated young artist who fought against being pigeon-holed by the media; the iconoclast who stood up to the smug, self-righteous conservatism of the folk movement at the Newport Folk Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. The events of those two concerts are represented in the film with a great deal of humor, surrealism, and melodrama. It’s a folk story, passed down through generations, and that’s the point. It isn’t about the truth of those events, it’s about the cultural resonance of his actions, and the way we tell and internalize the meaning of the narrative — it’s the moment where Dylan ceases to be a folk singer, and becomes a folk hero.

Unsurprisingly, my second favorite Dylan in I’m Not There is the one played by Marcus Carl Franklin. Unlike the fairly representational versions of Dylan portrayed by Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, and Christian Bale — or the glamorous post-modern/meta representation of Heath Ledger, who plays an actor playing Dylan in a biopic — Franklin’s character is purely metaphorical, and stands in for the young Dylan eager to cast off his past and reinvent himself on his own terms. The scenes with Franklin suggest that the singer’s transforming persona is an intrinsic part of his character, and of his art — from early on, he understood the power of becoming a character, of becoming something else for the benefit of his art, his audience, and himself.

The film does not follow a linear path, but it’s important to note that the story begins with Franklin since it establishes the central conflict of the picture, i.e., the complications of reconciling the differences between the artist’s embrace of affectation, and the premium placed on authenticity in folk music, and the culture at large — or at least up until the end of the 70s, since its worth noting that Dylan’s life after his conversion to Christianity in 1979 is not acknowledged in any way by the film. (It makes sense — nothing else after that moment in his life has any particular mythic resonance, and so Dylan the legend effectively died when his life ceased to be a story.) Even though there are six incarnations of Dylan in I’m Not There, there’s really just two versions of his myth on display, and they are at odds with one another — he’s either the idealistic truth-teller, or the guy who forces us to look beyond objective truth of biography and dig into the complicated mess of life via fiction, poetry, and reinvention of character. You don’t really have to pick one or the other, but I’m pretty sure I only really have use for the latter version.

Oh yeah, and doesn’t Stephen Malkmus sound like he’s on his very best behavior on this version of “Ballad of a Thin Man”? When I first heard his three cuts on the I’m Not There soundtrack, I was kinda shocked by the reverence in his voice. I mean, I wasn’t expecting him to goof off or rewrite the lyrics, but after seeing the film, the straight, somewhat mannered vocal take makes a bit more sense — he’s providing the singing voice of Cate Blanchett, and he has to bend to her performance. Well, that, and he’s a Dylan fanboy, and I imagine he was just trying hard not to fuck it up. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)