Looking back 32nd HKIFF - I'm not there

Perhaps wishing to know a bit more about Bob Dylan before going into the cinema (so that at least to appreicate his music more, all characters seems to be unconnected to each other (despite loosely you can relate them into different stage of Dylan's career), "I'm not there" serves so well as a deconstructed study of him as a person. Is he really real in terms of concerning others, or just as fake as other popular artists? Does his music, which moved so many by its message behind, really what he care to sing about?

At the end, we are not looking for definite answers from Todd Haynes' film, which juggle around with different aspect of this legendary singer/songwriter's life, using different actors in different era. Apart from the brillant performances of some all the actors (in particular, Cate Blanchett and Christan Bale, who can carry out Dylan's presences using only their body language), it was the editing and the artistic use of on-screen titling/text that surprise me the most. When thinking it again, it was clearly a reminder of works from Jean Luc Godard. It is a film more than just protraying the Dylan's character, but also searching for some deeper meaning to his own action/reaction in different era that he lived in, again close to what Godard have done in his heyday. Indeed, it was almost rare nowadays to see film that is so "Godardian", something which is so creative, so "breathlessly" done and offer so many faces and ways for interpertation.