Grade:       C

Moral:        Whoa... meta-meta...

Count Todd Haynes as the worthy director who, damn it, you just can’t bring yourself to appreciate the way you feel you should, and count his I’m Not There. as his breakout work that, damn it again, you’re again incapable of really liking. Haynes’s stuff has always been exercises in channeling other directors, from Kubrick (Safe) to Sirk (Far From Heaven), but here he’s finally free, twisting in the stratosphere of his own iconoclasm, but the movie feels confused and murky where it should feel sly and complex.

Being a meta rendition of a meta personality, it’s a wonky ride from start to finish, and there is plenty to munch upon: for starters, the thing looks great, with a refined aesthetic that subtly connotes all the different eras in which it (meta-) takes place. It’s also phenomenally well acted, with four / five very different takes on the variant specter of Bob Dylan, including a flooring turn from Cate Blanchett that’s less gimmick casting than it is simply astute casting.

Strange, then, that despite its breezy avoidance of making sense (which isn’t meant flippantly; there’s a thematic purpose to the confusion), I’m Not There. still insists on layering itself further, of adding one more angle to its polygonal narrative, such that it all veritably collapses into forced abstruseness. Namely, there’s a long, monotonous part involving Billy the Kid – cum – Bob Dylan (I call him ‘Bibly the Kidlan’) that doesn’t really add anything to the film, whether in terms of its theme, story, or aesthetic, and it feels wittingly boring to the point of aggravation. Sure, we could go down the rabbit hole (and with Haynes, why not) and see it not as an addition, but as a purposeful subtraction from the movie, a meta-meta reference to Dylan’s own self-destruction and self-contradiction by being, itself, filmically self-destructive and self-contradictive. But if true, it’d be a clear case of theory made monstrous, which is never something you’d want to sit with in a dark room, trapped for two hours. Either way, I’m Not There. is still leagues ahead of the bromide of a typical biopic, and its attempt to incorporate the essence of its subject into its very construction is fascinating... it’s just a little too wrapped up for its own good.