Fall Movie Preview 2007

I'm Not There
Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger
OPENING NOVEMBER 21st

It pisses Bob Dylan off to be pegged for his "finger-pointing songs." Why limit a chameleon like Minnesota's Robert Allen Zimmerman to the face of social protest? So director Todd Haynes, who wrote the script of I'm Not There with Oren Moverman, gives him many faces: young black runaway (Marcus Carl Franklin), poet (Ben Whishaw), androgynous rocker (Cate Blanchett), movie star (Heath Ledger), preacher (Christian Bale) and outlaw (Richard Gere). Haynes is a visionary who'd never try to paint Dylan into a biopic corner. He catches him on the fly -- in allusive words and surreal images that you'd expect to find, well, in a Dylan song. Against all odds, the film works like a dream -- better yet, like a brilliant hallucination. All the actors have their moments, but Blanchett is stupendous -- a firebrand who understands that Dylan represents the fight of every artist against the creative death that comes from being defined and owned.