“Even if everyone in this room loves it, you will be arguing about this film for a long time,” estimable film critic and noted Dylan scholar Greil Marcus said at the North American premiere of the Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” in Telluride, Colorado.
“Great actors want to do unconventional things,” explained director Todd Haynes told Marcus on Saturday morning. “All I was really focused on was trying to find a narrative and cinematic parallel, on some level, to what Dylan did to popular music in his era, not that it’s ended and not that it’s a singular turn.”
Haynes also said the film centered on what he calls “Dylan’s dilemma of identity, his quest to find creative freedom in the process of shedding his selves,” which chimed with “the multiple identity crises that the ’60s unleashed.”
The film also screened this weekend at the Venice Film Festival. Viewers should not “get too bogged down in the literal connections to Dylan and let it take you somewhere,” Haynes told reporters of the abstract biopic that channels seven stages of Dylan’s career through six different actors.
“Let it wash over you and sort of take you like a dream,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Italian “I’m Not There” site has given us a new film poster that gives us our first peek at Michelle Williams’ character Coco (said to be the Edie Sedgwick composite).
The site’s slightly modified trailer has shots of Dylan himself in it, Julianne Moore looking much like the rumored Joan Baez character she’s supposed to play (it pretty much confirms it now), and shots of Michelle Williams in very Warh0l-esque looking parties.
Echoing sentiments she already made to the Daily Mail, Haynes said Cate Blanchett was afraid of tackling the role of Dylan. “Cate was scared. She told me many times that this was a very scary challenge for her,” Haynes told reporters after a press screening of the film that runs 2 hours and 15 minutes. “I think it took her a long time to commit to the role and she’s a very busy actor and had to balance it with her schedule, but mostly I think it was due to fear, which is completely understandable.”
Oscar talk of her apparently outstanding performance continues to brew. Of Richard Gere’s outlaw Dylan, Haynes said of the post-motorcycle accident Zimmy. “He settled in Woodstock, disappeared, raised a family, went into the basement and recorded all this mysterious music with The Band and basically in a weird way he almost never came back again.”
“He never reentered that central spotlight again.”