Back Stage

SASA MAJUMA | Tuesday March 9, 2010 00:00

I'm Not There: The Lives and Time of Bob Dylan (2007) is being shown today only at 7 p.m. at the Maru a Pula School, A/V Centre (Gaborone Film Society).

There are at least three other movies about Bob Dylan. The previous one, directed by Martin Scorsese, was No Direction Home-Bob Dylan (Mmegi, 20 January 2006). The new one, I'm Not There, explores Dylan's life, times and creations even further, without ever referring to 'Bob Dylan'. Instead six actors stand in for various stages in his life, each with their own name and take on the artist of the 60s who became a recluse after a motorcycle accident and when he came back, was as a born again Christian.

We meet the first reincarnation head on. A person is running to jump on a freight train toting a guitar case as big as he is. This is 'Woody Guthrie' (acted by a diminutive Marcus Carl Franklin) an 11-year-old runaway of colour striking out to recreate the struggle music of the 1930s. A woman who shelters him tells him that this is 1959, that he should forget the past and, 'Live in your own time.'

There are more visions of Dylan. We leave Woody, but will return to him, frequently, as he was formative in more ways than one for many lives. We next meet a young protest singer Jack Rollins (played by Christian Bale) who with his nasal voice and complex and committed ballads takes Greenwich Village, Manhattan, by storm. He is quickly embraced as the voice of the movement - so why be surprised when he becomes reincarnated as a Pentecostal Preacher John. A young British actor (Ben Whishaw) plays him as Arthur Rimbaud, a 19th-century French poet.

The first Australian to take the singer on is Heath Ledger (now late) as Robbie. He and his woman Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) go through a cycle of meeting, joining and parting. Richard Gere becomes Robbie (and older Dylan) or Billy the Kid in Riddle, Missouri in the 19th Century-complete with giraffe and incognito in Hallowe'en. The best and most amazing is the second Australian, Cate Blanchett all in black, as Jude 'Mighty' Quinn, a 1960s character who stretches and stretches you out in a black-and-white cinema verite take off. They are all Bob Dylan. If you admire Dylan you will go for all the Dylanology in this film. For example when Quinn crashes off screen followed by silence, it is Dylan's motorcycle accident that altered his life.

This is a biopic like none you have ever seen before. It is about Dylan but not about Dylan. Dylan's music is here. Other documentaries on him and the various biographies are here - and not here. The film also has many from the 1960s here like Allen Ginsberg (acted by David Cross) and Coco Rivington (played by Michelle Williams).Watch, listen and look for them all.

Who was Bob Dylan? He was a young man who remade himself in the late 1950s. He was a Jewish child who developed as a teenager in Eisenhower-era Minnesota. He was Robert Zimmerman, who had the brilliant insight to assume the name of a poet from Wales. He sang like he belonged in Oklahoma in the 1930s - along with Woody Guthrie. He took Greenwich Village by surprise and became its voice.  'Something is happening here//But you don't know what it is//Do you, Mr. Jones?' in 'Ballad of a Thin Man'. Or as Dylan sang in Idiot Wind, 'I couldn't believe after all these years//You didn't know me better than that'. Now is your chance to get started.

If you really want to know more you might begin with Martin Scorsese's 'No Direction Home-Bob Dylan' (2005). I wrote then, 'In Greenwich Village he found he could sing in various joints, that he made friends easily and other musicians were open and supportive of him. Joan Baez was the first to invite him on stage with her. He played both the harmonica (held on a special neck rest) and the acoustical guitar and sang with a nasal twang songs by Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie like I Ain't Dead Yet; If I Had Wings and others. When the poet in him finally burst out it was to write a tribute to Woody Guthrie whom he had finally found in an asylum. Dylan never looked back -at least until his crash.' There are many other sources on the web, but none as much fun as I'm Not There: The Lives and Time of Bob Dylan being shown tonight.

I'm Not There is two hours and 15 minutes long. It is rated 16+. The director is Todd Haynes who wrote the script with Oren Moverman, based on Haynes's own story. The cinematographer is Edward Lachman. The editor is Jay Rabinowitz. The production designer is Judy Becker. The music is not a compilation, but is for Dylanophiles. The narrator is Kris Kristofferson.

Email:sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk