Stars:
***
Rating: R for language, nudity, and drug use
Run
Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
The life
and times of poet and prophet Bob Dylan like you’ve never seen it before.
How to
deconstruct a shape-shifting homage to the man behind the music? A plethora of
actors and identities own a piece of Dylan in a rag-tag pastiche of genius, wit
and irony.
As ambassador
of Dylan’s youthful dreams 11-year old African American troubadour Woody
Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin) train-hops across the country spinning tall
tales of melodious glory. Dylan’s early success manifests itself in the
character of folksinger extraordinaire Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) who skyrockets
to fame by creating homespun music of the working man’s conscience.
Heath
Ledger’s Robbie is a New York actor playing Rollins in a counter-culture
biography of the absentee sensation. The film’s most startling bit is the
persona of Jude, played by Cate Blanchett as Dylan’s nihilistic, drugged-out
self who suffers the hardcore onslaught of fame’s ghostly underbelly.
In full
retreat from a world gone wild is Billy (Richard Gere), shedding a celebrated
past by living in virtual exile in podunks-ville Missouri. All of the above cut
with scenes of a renegade poet cum narrator (Ben Winshaw) in the midst of
interrogation by an unspecified government commission.
Performances
are key when dealing with a live enigmatic subject. Standouts Blanchett and
Bale embrace the idiosyncrasies of their characters above and beyond the call
of duty. Best of show: Bale belting gospel with a mammoth afro and sans-a-belt
leisure suit circa 1970s.
Dylan’s
women get their day in the sun too: Julianne Moore as Jack’s duet in life and
on stage, Charlotte Gainsbourg as Robbie’s disillusioned, spouse (mirroring the
turbulence of the Vietnam War) and Michelle Williams as Jude’s petulant
underground ingénue.
There’s
narrative confusion aplenty and a too-long running time, not to mention
transitional issues and an oblique reality. But once into its rhythm “There” is
a satisfying oddity, an abstract tone poem that can’t be denied its hip vibe
and soulful labors.
Writer/director
Todd Haynes, a self-described Dylan junkie, infuses every frame with fanatical
passion and a sly knowledge of Dylan’s metamorphoses and inscrutable mythology.
The times they are a-changin’.