Yesterday afternoon we were lucky enough to catch the Todd Haynes Dylan biopic, ‘I’m Not There‘ at a last minute addition to the wonderful (if slightly elusive) London Film Festival. On paper it’s the hl film of the year: Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale in movie about Dylan from the director of ‘Far from Heaven‘ ? We don’t have many more boxes to tick.

Unfortunately it’s a hard movie to recommend, though daring in both choice of cast and narrative structure, the film fails to delivery on the immense promise of the incredibly creative premise. It’s pretty clear from the offset that todd haynes is an enormous dylan fan and it’s to his credit that rather than try to deconstruct the enigma that dylan has created he lets his cinematic dylan personas weave their own abstract portrait of one of the 20th century’s great artists.

If only clever ideas were enough.

Modern art might be able to exist on the ethereal promise of good ideas alone(technique be damned) but thankfully film is at least partly restrained by the need to entertain as well as to creative stimulate and no amount of oscar worthy acting and chronologically flighty editing can disguise the lack of that most precious cinematic commodity: good writing.

Two and half hours later it feels like you’ve been the victim of an incredibly sophisticated con, that beneath the visual sheen and clever tricks there’s not much there. Edit the incessantly shifting scenes into thematic vignetes then only one or two of dylan’s personas have stories worth telling. The rest is sometimes beautiful, oft time frustratingly oblique, filmic riffs on familiar chapters of the dylan biography.

The assembled talent and dylan’s story both deserved more.

Barbara & Ernie-Play with Fire