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Since high school, Bob Dylan has been the soundtrack to my life. I laughed with "Positively Fourth Street" and cried to "Blue Moon." I spent days picking out "Blowin' in the Wind" on my guitar until I got it just perfect. So it was no question that I would see I'm Not There when it came out. I was intrigued by the idea different actors, different in more ways than one, playing stages in Bob Dylan's life. I must admit I had no great expectations; in fact, I entered the theatre expecting to be confused. After all, it is Bob Dylan. The great mystery man whose lyrics, and life, make no more sense than his tuneless musical groans.

My expectations were fulfilled, and more. While not a spectacular movie, I'm Not There reaches for the farthest corners of the musical universe and grasps the stars. The premise lends itself to confusion, and I spent the first half of the movie trying to figure out how the multiple story-lines with multiple characters wove together, and which one of them was really Bob Dylan. Answer: they don't, and they all are. Once I finally realized this and settled into the artistic world, I enjoyed it increasingly.
I thought the movie was a biography, with a beginning, middle, and end, a clearly definable path through this man's life. I was wrong. Instead, various threads weave a tapestry whose picture, when removed from the loom, revealed his essence. Only one of the characters, only one of the stories, is recognizably Dylan. Interestingly enough, this is the character (male) played brilliantly by Cate Blanchett. She portrays a fictional version of Dylan at his conversion between acoustic folk and electric rock music, drug-ridden, despised by his fans, and caught up in sexual intrigue.
To someone entirely unfamiliar with Dylan's life and story, I'm Not There could be utterly incomprehensible. It relies on the viewer's ability to quickly recognize and integrate elements of Dylan in otherwise unrelated narratives: the folk heart of a young black boy, the stick-it-to-the-man rebellion in an elderly Virginian, the brief (and very briefly addressed) "Christian" period, the defiant mystery of a fuzzy-haired boy being interviewed. Blanchett's character repeatedly argues that he is un-definable, that no one can understand him and it is useless to try. The movie echoes the same in an unspoken question that reverberates in the viewer's mind: which of these is the real Bob Dylan?

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