I am Not There

Bob Dylan is without a doubt one of today’s most influential artists. It’s not just that his songs are sought after by listeners spanning several generations – many such listeners tend to interpret the world and their own life according to their message. At the same time, few people have gone through as many twists of fate as Bob Dylan, who always tried with all his might to conceal whichever of his many masks belied his true face. When Todd Haynes resolved to take his life-long fascination with Dylan’s story to the screen, he opted for an exceptionally risky way of going about it, committing the portrayal of the singer’s character to six different actors at once. The result, however, exceeded expectations, and Haynes’ cubist portrait of one of the cultural icons of the 20th century, in which Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett et al. take on the musician’s guise, grew into a compelling exploration of what determines the identity of a single person’s life.