I'm Not There

Last night I dragged my body downstairs and watched (along with some of the others in the house) "I'm Not There". I had been looking forward to seeing this for a while. The title claims the movie is "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan." Now I like Dylan a lot, enough that we named our favourite blackdaughtero for him. But, I swear, I understood but a fraction of the movie. The movie felt as if you suddenly happened upon a bunch of people that went to the same school as you, twenty years after you were there. They talk the same language, and some scenes are vaguely familiar, but the slang is completely different and they keep on laughing at inside jokes you know nothing about. The music was great though, with a lot of my favourite songs sung by Dylan and a host of others.

This morning blackwifeo send me a pointer to a New York Times review of the movie. The reviewer loved the movie, as did a whole lot of other people on Amazon. They all saw depth, and Dylan's many faces, and multi-faceted complexity, and unapologetic audacity. It might have been good, I suppose, I just didn't understand it at all. I even found the acting a little stiff - and I got the message quickly that Dylan did not want the world to think he knew the answer for all. I hate it when movies make me feel stupid. It did not help the headache one bit.