And yet another “I’m Not There” image is unveiled. Now all we need are shots of Ben Wishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin and the entire cast as Dylan will be complete.
Six actors play “Dylan,” in the biopic, but there are actually seven incarnations of Zimmy in the film as Christian Bale (pictured), plays two versions of Bob (John and Jack respectively).
Bale plays Dylan in his protest-music period, characterized by songs like “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” and the singer’s religious phase, exploring gospel music (typified by the 1980 album Saved).
“It’s not a literal retelling of Dylan’s life,” “I’m Not There” director Todd Haynes recently told the Delaware Journal. “We’re accentuating the radical changes in point of view and style and genre and identity.”
Each Dylan is named something other than Bob (aside from Heath Ledger), Cate Blanchett is Jude in his “Dont Look Back,” going-electric phase, Winshaw portrays Bob fused with the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud and Richard Gere is Pat – as his Dylan character is vaguely modelled from Dylan’s appearance in Sam Peckinpah’s western, “Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid” (Dylan wrote music for and co-starred in the film) The young Franklin plays Dylan as a boy named Woody.
“We turned Dylan into his own obsessions and took him a step further than he was in real life,” Haynes said. “That film is about the hounded artist. And around that time, Dylan was being hounded: Why isn’t he protesting? Why is he being so weird, and why are the songs so incomprehensible?”
Haynes added that the film was a tribute to Dylan’s ever-mutable personality and artistic instincts. “It’s partly a desire to figure him out and partly a desire to protect something that will always be enigmatic,” he said. “We want to know where the source of his creative energies comes from, but we don’t want to destroy it.”
