Haynes doesn t tell stories; he deconstructs them and the social conventions in which they re rooted. I m Not There skips around among time periods and actors so much that you almost think, The movie s not there, either . But that s probably Haynes s point, and I admire him unreservedly for attempting to devise an organic syntax to illustrate his subject s restless odyssey.
But some of the movie left me cold. The scenes that play are between Ledger and the vivid Charlotte Gainsbourg as his great love, and everything with Blanchett, whose style of impersonation has never seemed so queerly perfect. (It s true that she often reminded me of Chuck Barris on The Gong Show , but that somehow fit, too.
) Too bad the scenes with Gere as Dylan in his Billy the Kid/Peckinpah/ Knockin on Heaven s Door period are so much blander than what has preceded them.
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