the defiant, notoriously slippery aura of a pedestalled man like Bob Dylan, who
— no matter how people may fight to shape him into their own little voice-of-America
figurine — only forks his persona a thousand more directions, always
contradictory, never content. And even then, Dylan must fight the resulting
expectation for constant change, because a true cowboy doesn’t stick around
once the locals have got him pinned.
In order to avoid simplistic or misinterpreted caricatures —
such as, most recently, Hayden Christensen’s obvious unkempt brood in “Factory
Girl” — the real-life Dylan makes an effort to squelch biopic hopefuls from the
getgo. But apparently the old grump saw something he liked in twisted “Far From
Heaven” director Todd Haynes, whose multiple-personality tweak on the
portrait-of-a-legend trend promised to pay adequately artsy tribute to the folk
icon’s many rebirths and dodgy transformations. “Maybe the film also had a
little bit of irreverence in it as well and it wasn’t just worshipful,” Haynes
said in a phone interview. “I think that actually is something he finds
refreshing.”
But all this talk of Dylan’s epic elusiveness, of Haynes’
daring use of six separate actors to represent the aura’s many layers, like
it’s all some kind of left-field taboo — like it’s something strange for a
person to be without singular shtick — seems a little dramatic. Yeah, so one of
the Dylans is a boxcar-hopping black kid (Marcus Carl Franklin) who claims to
be Woody Guthrie, and one is the feminine Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), who
sidesteps from “A Hard Day’s Night” frolic to surreal “8 1/2” garden party
without so much as a between-scene fade. But despite Haynes’ best efforts to
fragment the artist’s life beyond literality, a few dreamlike sequences
(including Quinn machine-gunning the Newport Folk Festival crowd, aka going
electric) are not enough to warrant such controversy. After all, Blanchett is
an impeccably male replication of the 1960s icon, her scenes linear and mostly
true to life; let’s just say the obligatory celeb-impersonation Oscar (“Ray,”
“Walk the Line”) isn’t far in her future.
Then again, the film’s plotless composition is admittedly
strange compared to its biopic contemporaries. Its strains never merge, its
narratives miss many a beat and no one can be trusted — even talking heads are
fictional (Julianne Moore does an excellent recounting as the Joan Baez-based
Alice Fabian). Not a single character upholds the unadulterated authenticity we
skeptical digital-agers have become so obsessed with. Aside from Franklin and
Blanchett, the film’s other Dylans include Christian Bale as both wide-eyed
folkster and born-again pastor, Heath Ledger as the movie star commissioned to
play the voice of a generation, Ben Whishaw as a rebellious poet/interviewee
and Richard Gere in an almost off-puttingly metaphoric take on “Billy the Kid.”
His characters are as much parts of Dylan as parts of Haynes and parts of
ourselves — nothing is about just one person, and no one person is entirely
authentic in the traditional sense of the word.
Haynes’ intentions aren’t a behind-the-music tour through
Dylan’s ups and downs, most of which we’re tired with already; in fact,
lifeline summary is all but lost to the wind. If the filmmaker only captures
one thing, one previously intangible essence, that is enough. “I think the best
way to enjoy it is — like it’s taking a drug or having a dream or getting
inside a great Dylan record,” Haynes said. One entirely human feeling that
transcends past and present, worth a million summaries.
