There will be blood on the tracks. The 34th annual Telluride Film Festival opened in Colorado Friday night, with attention particularly trained on the world premieres of two projects that have been in the making and buzzed about for years: Todd Haynes’ take on the life of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s uncharacteristic foray into period filmmaking, the Upton Sinclair adaptation There Will Be Blood. Well, actually, it was just one reel, or about 20 minutes’ worth, of that latter film. There will be frustration!
I’m Not There was being seen for the very first time, since press screenings that had been arranged for journalists attending the upcoming Toronto Film Festival, where it will also unspool, were canceled. It’s every bit as loopy as you’ve imagined, assuming you’re familiar with the basic conceit — that six different actors play various aspects of Dylan’s personae. In other words, it’s Palindromes meets No Direction Home… with good portions of the film playing out as a parody of that latter documentary, which premiered in Telluride two years ago. Most successful at incarnating Dylan, oddly enough, is Cate Blanchett, getting the most screen time and obviously having a ball playing the Blonde on Blonde-era Dylan with a fright wig. Visibly suffering onscreen, meanwhile, is poor Richard Gere, who plays Dylan as Billy the Kid — or maybe playing an actor playing Billy the Kid? — and looks even more baffled about what he’s supposed to be doing than we are. Somewhere in between are Heath Ledger (who plays Dylan as a hot Hollywood actor; though this makes no sense, it’s a chance to dramatize the protagonist’s divorce from Sara Dylan while heading even further into the realm of fictionalization). Christian Bale (portraying him in both his folk-singer and born-again phases), and, yes, an African American lad who likes the ride the rails, à la Woody Guthrie (bringing to mind The Jerk, since apparently Dylan, too, was born as a poor black child). Like a lot of my fellow Dylanologists in the audience, I chuckled at the sections that use dialogue from Dylan’s press conferences and concerts almost verbatim, but for the non-buffs I’ve talked with, it seems to play out pretty much as a 2-hours-15-minutes series of in-jokes. At least it’s more coherent and commercial than Dylan’s own 2003 writing and starring effort, Masked and Anonymous. But maybe not a lot more.
As for There Will Be Blood, the first rumors had the filmpremiering in its entirety as part of a festival tribute to DanielDay-Lewis; the second set of rumors were less optimistic, with P.T.Anderson supposedly bringing a 40-minute piece of the movie. Thereality turned out to be even less: just 20 minutes. But as singularreels go, this one was a doozy — I kept checking my watch, hoping theexcerpt wasn’t about to wrap up.
Anderson (at right) claimed that this was theonly reel of the film that was finished enough to show, but it sets upthe plot’s multiple conflicts so neatly, I had to wonder if he didn’tpick this segment because it just makes for a great, self-containedtrailer for the film. As Day-Lewis (left) told the crowd, it’s "really,really, really, really loosely based" on the Sinclair novel (I forgethow many times he said "loosely," but I believe it was about five).It’s also hardly recognizable as an Anderson film, from the looks ofthings, not being an ensemble piece, for starters. Yet to to the extentthat his pictures tend to focus on weird extended families in generaland father/child relationships in particular, it’s easy to see Blood aspart of an Anderson throughline. In the excerpt, Day-Lewis, playing aself-styled "oil man," is first seen telling his young son that heplans to buy some crude-rich land under false pretenses, making his kidcomplicit in his duplicity. Soon, he’s buying a plot from a naïvefarmer whose intensely religious and suspicious son looks like thefilm’s principle antagonist. But there are other potential enemies setup, since Day-Lewis tells the workers he brings in to work the desert landthat the area will be irrigated and literally bear fruit, and they’llset up a thriving town there. Unless you’ve seen more verdant oilfields than I have, you know that particular plot thread probably won’tend happily either. But we’ll all have to wait till December to seethe promised red stuff of the title.
Premiering Saturday: the Sean Penn-directed adaptation of Into the Wild. More on that in our next report…
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A movie based on Bob Dylan? I can feel myself falling asleep already, lol.
I loved Dylan’s memoir, but isn’t there a chronicles 2 that should be coming?
When I first saw Cate Blanchett in that wig, I swear to go, I thought I was looking at a picture of Bob Dylan. That whole movie just seems like one big mess, honestly.
Ive said it before: Anyone who has seen “Notes on a Scandal” knows Blanchett can even take a crap and make it look good.
Who knows what the films are like. If you did not pony up thousands for a patrons ticket, you have had little chance of getting in more than one film a day. It seems as if the organizers sold way too many tickets and if you are not able to line up 2 hours ahead of schedule, and you don’t hold a patron pass, you have had little chance of getting in. Veteran attendees who have said they saw 16 or more films during this event in the past are now saying they will be lucky to see 6 to 8. If not corrected for next year, this problem could be the beginning of the end for this festival, regardless of the quality of the films.
Aside from the grammatical errors in Chris Willman’s blurb (he does get paid to write, right?), I was bothered by the sense of arrogance in his editorial. Calling himself a “Dylanologist” and then mocking a courageous effort to do the impossible – reflect what and who Dylan is in a film – begs the question, “So, where is your contribution?” The impression I was left with was that no one in the world understands Bob Dylan like Chris Willman and any attempts to do so are the stuff of laughable contempt. While I have only seen clips of the film, I think maybe the film was lost on Mr. Willman and he is compensating because what I saw was innovative, intelligent, bold, and, yes, reflected a sense of freedom.
Just for the record, Dylan didn’t play Billy the Kid. His character was obliquely referred to as Alias.
i got into the first screening of this without a pass, it wasn’t too bad.
the movie is amazing, although i agree that Gere’s portions does drag it down a bit. i interviewed director Todd Haynes about the film, check it out here:
http://blog.spout.com/2007/09/01/telluride-todd-haynes/
highcountry: There is certainly some point to the bizarrely communal behavior of those paying the higher prices for patron passes all attending the same films — such behavior that, quite frankly, no one has any control over. As someone who works at one of the smaller theaters — and who witnessed several shows that were not filled to capacity — my guess is that some regular passholders aren’t reaching out to the challenging/retrospective material that really defines Telluride. Yes, that _Juno_ premieres there is fab, but missing the tribute to Michel Legrand (which I will assume you did) means that you didn’t catch what TFF is really about. (Notably, this blog doesn’t talk about that material either.) In days past, attendees who were shut out of one theater simply found something they wouldn’t have thought to go to at another theater — and often were pleasantly surprised. I know: that’s happened to me several times.
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