The Errant Æsthete

In one of the first reviews to emerge on the popularly awaited film, “I’m Not There,” Devin McKinney of the Guardian Unlimited explains that those seeking a conventional biopic won’t like it.

“…it gives us Dylan the shameless self-inventor and emotional gangster; the sexist and egomaniac; the opportunistic hustler and soul-rotten hipster. In short, the pathological genius who justifies every self-elevating cruelty in the name of, what else, genius.”

REVIEW

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UPDATE: Maybe it’s a reflection of cultural bias, Dylan was, after all, as rooted in America as any one balladeer can be, but Stephanie Zacharek of Salon offers a very different view from that of the English press in her review of the Dylan biopic.” “I’m Not There” is a kind of accompaniment for our boxcar journey, made by a fellow vagabond on the road. Haynes is a storyteller with music in his pockets. … This Dylan — this idea of Dylan — is, as the movie’s opening tells us, “Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity,” although he is perhaps more a place than a person, an elusive destination that we — that is, those of us who love his music — keep traveling toward.”

UPDATE: I admit to having a bias for A.O.Scott, movie reviewer of the NY Times so I was particularly pleased to learn he was assigned “I’m Not There.” He is uncannily brilliant in his ability to see a picture through the lens of the time and period of its genesis and his psychological evaluations are always spot on. “Among its many achievements, Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There” hurls a Molotov cocktail through the facade of the Hollywood biopic factory.”