de egresso...

We saw the film I'm Not There last night.

The film's signature piece of cinematic brilliance, much commented upon, to cast several actors to play several characters, all of whom present Dylan in some way, but none of whom represent Dylan in an entirely straightforward way, makes me think that the director had read his Confessions: not only this technique of destabilizing the film's subject, but also the not-so-subtle title, and the perhaps more subtle allusions to Ginsburg and Rimbaud,* all point to a fairly deep understanding of the scattered self.

(If the film offers any resolution to these scattered portraits, which would certainly be up for debate, it would seem to do so via Dylan's own music - cf. Richard Gere as Billy the Kid picking up Woody Guthrie's guitar. Depending what one thinks of Dylan's music, this is either the ultimate betrayal of the Augustinian legacy, in which the self is able to bring itself to selfhood, or, in reasonably deep fidelity, if one allows for a more charitable reading in which Dylan's music participates in cosmic music; I'm not sure the film tries to make that move).

A potential problem lies here: The consensus seems to be that to whatever extent one tolerates or celebrates Dylan, one will tolerate or celebrate the film in its overly self-aware eccentricities. And so I'm left wondering if the film, beyond the facility in which we are allowed to observe Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett playing the 'same' roles, ends up in precisely the tautological realm which it ostensibly tries to escape, transposing the film's central target of 'identity' to a higher aesthetic realm, sublating it but in the same motion preserving it more fundamentally.

All it would take to disprove this thesis would be one person who loves Dylan but hated the film, or loved the film but is profoundly annoyed by Dylan. Although I suspect the former category is probably filled with the sorts of people who would've booed at Newport.

In any case, I'm Not There is both considerably less enjoyable and considerably more interesting than Scorsese's No Direction Home.

*For locating this passage for me, I am grateful to Alex, whose site's title is an homage to the same passage: happy coincidence.