The 35mm Afterlife

I've recently seen the best movie of 2007. It's called I'm Not There, and I'm sure you will be hearing a lot about it in the oncoming months. But let's hope that the Weinsteins' academy campaign for Cate Blanchett doesn't obscure what's really going on here... Todd Haynes and his actors have done something truly amazing.

Excuse me for saying so, but not since Citizen Kane has a film reveled in such endless innovation, in the interest of contemplating identity and mortality, as I'm Not There.

The difference between the two masterpieces - aside from 66 years - is that the first film is a cynical epitaph that comes closer than any other film - before or after - to capturing a man's life on celluloid and then boldly proclaims such a feat impossible. It was a profound statement in 1941 that thematically and aesthetically ushered in the era of noir, but its detective narrative was a gentle way of teaching audiences a harsh truth: identity is very slippery and probably unattainable.

I'm Not There, on the other hand, is a balls-out celebration of reckless abandon that sees the impossibility of attaining truth as a mark of hope, rather than sadness. This, of course, is also the difference between modernism and postmodernism. The root of Haynes's interest in postmodernism - a system that allows for contradictions and relativism - may be the fluidity of sexuality or it may be the collapsing of time (mortal-time, cinema-time) - both long time themes of Haynes's work.

For Haynes, film cannot teach; as for Dylan, songs cannot protest. What they can do is provoke interpretation. And so, in I'm Not There, we get Todd Haynes's interpretation of Bob Dylan's music and many lives, which were interpretations of Woody Guthrie. As well, we get multiple actors' interpretations of Dylan, representing the way that a single person can show varied faces to different people - family, friends, colleagues, public.

And there will be no uniform interpretation of the film. A movie like this can get away with anything, of course. Because in every moment of imperfection - Heath Ledger isn't as entertaining to watch as Christian Bale, who isn't as captivating as Cate Blanchett; Marcus Carl Franklin's young black Bob Dylan and Richard Gere's old, chizzeled Bob Dylan poke perplexing holes in time-space continuum - I am being challenged as a viewer, and that is the movie's point.

I'm Not There's enemy is the status quo. Therefore, my expectations and assumptions as a cinephile and audience member are under assault. Todd Haynes's cinematic machine guns are pointed right at me, and unlike the HD and CGI weapons that make me tremble with fear, these guns make me giddily anticipate the Afterlife.