I'm Not There

First of all, I'm back in NYC for the week, doing a little cat-sitting for a friend on the Upper West Side. The cat is stand-offish, which is absolutely perfect for me, as I'm not doing this to make friends. I figure if the cat is still alive when its owner gets back, then I've done a good job. Can I go 7 days w/o petting the cat? We shall see...

NYC feels like a warm, comfy blanket. Yesterday morning, I got coffee and plopped down on a bench in the median smack in the middle of Broadway, just watched the cars and people going by, remembering, oh yeah, this is what it feels like to be not dead. DC has sort of started to grow on me in a way, but it still feels like a place where dreams (and social lives) go to die. But maybe it's best to live somewhere else and spend one week per month in NYC. It's like rediscovering the city over and over again. Kind of nice, at least for now.

I saw I'm Not There at Film Forum and really, really liked it. I'm not a big Dylan fan. I'm not a big Todd Haynes fan, either (in fact, Safe is on my 10 Most Overrated Films of All Time List. It's no Children of Men, but it's close), though his latter day work has really impressed me. I spoke with a few people who felt you needed to know a ton about Dylan to get the film, but I disagree with that. I'm a casual fan at best. I know the broad strokes, but not much else. I probably got maybe 30-40% of the references...but I didn't feel this took away from the experience at all. In fact, I didn't think the success of the movie hinged on getting/catching all the details. It was a surreal, trippy couple of hours. If it's Dylan minutia you're after, that's easily attainable (I saw a Rough Guide to Dylan in a used bookshop after the movie). This was more like a dream of Dylan. For a performer who's mythological persona might be even more relevant than his music at this point, I'm Not There is a perfect approach to his "story", especially when you consider the alternative: another paint by numbers musical biopic ala Ray or Walk the Line or countless others. I feel i know Dylan better, in a deeper way, than I would have after sitting through 2 hours of conventional rock star behind the music cliches. And if nothing else, I'm Not There feels totally new, which is a feat unto itself. Is it uneven? For sure. But excitingly so.

And Cate Blanchett can do nothing wrong. Wow.