I'm Not There

I've come to the conclusion that this movie was brought to Bob Dylan's attention almost exactly in this manner: "Hey Bob, we uh... we wanted to do a movie about your image, your character, and your lifestyle." "Hm. Well uh... that's fine, man. As long as you don't do a movie about me." And the filmmakers ran with that. In an interview with Christian Bale, he had said that the director, on several occasions, would have to go over the script because "it was like nothing I'd ever seen before". Because it was a movie about Bob Dylan, it had to be a movie that nobody would understand if they simply took it for face value.

If you've ever listened to...well, I'd say 80% of Dylan's music, you wouldn't be able to understand what the song's about within the first few hundreds of times listening to it. Of course simple political songs such as "The Times They Are A'Changin" are outright and well-known. But similar, more complicated songs such as "It's Alright, Ma" are deeper and require more concentration to take in all of his lyrics and understand the deeper meaning behind the work.

The film understood this. The director filled the dialogue with fatalistic acrobats who sing about their own time. "That girl's trouble." "Should we invite her?" "Of course. I always invite trouble." It's a sense of danger and pride that came with Dylan's attitude. He wanted to hate the world, because that would be so much easier for him. But instead, he had to live in it. Each and every main character in that film felt the same way.

Although the characters all wound up in pretty much similar situations, a passive audience would've taken the film for a round-about narrative, much like Dylan's songs. Also sharing a frighteningly similar aspect with his songs, if we look deeper at the movie, we find that there were several different ways to interpret it. We ask ourselves "yeah, okay, but what is the film really trying to say?" Although the director probably had his own take on that, we're left to decide for ourselves. And that is very Dylan.