Todd Haynes' I'm Not There

I just finished Todd Haynes' he's-all-this-and-so-much-more Dylan biopic I'm Not There. Too clean, safe, and literal. For an item which wants to embrace and enact confusion and the jagged to and fro it runs down fairly well trod paths -- cinematically and thematically. You keep hoping it will catch a splinter or cut itself, just so it might bleed a bit. What was probably viewed as a strength of Haynes' in regard to the material -- his formal preference for the distance and inauthenticity of pastiche might seem well-suited to mirror the man of many masks myth of Dylan -- in fact limits the film's ability to take seriously both the dense thicket of history and the freedom of the artist. What we get are set pieces (with some sections playing like rather stale music videos) and caricatures. The performances of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Heath Ledger are going to linger in my mind -- for they seem least concerned with Dylan. These are individuals, not myths. If only Haynes had spent more time letting "Dylan" get on a motorcycle and run it smack dab into a wall.