Cate Blanchette’s acting eclipses self-predicting ‘I’m Not There’

In theaters

I’M NOT THERE, directed by Todd Haynes, written by Haynes and Oren Moverman, 135 minutes, rated R.

Last year was a good year for Cate Blanchett even if the movies in which she appeared weren’t very good themselves.

In Todd Haynes’ bizarre biopic “I’m Not There,” the actress co-stars in an Academy Award-nominated performance as Jude, one of several characters meant to recall a fraction of the personality of the famously complicated musician Bob Dylan.

She is an intriguing choice of casting, to say the least, and the good news is that Blanchett, one of the most savvy and intelligent actors working today, pulls off the gender-bending just as seamlessly as you would expect.

Along with Dylan’s music, which is interlaced throughout (his name, however, is never spoken, though the singer does appear at the end), Blanchett is the best part of the movie. If you decide to see it, she’s the reason to see it – she deserves her Best Supporting Actress nomination just as she deserves her Best Actress nomination for her performance in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.”

Unfortunately, the trouble with “I’m Not There” is that the movie itself isn’t there. None of it adds up. From Haynes and Oren Moverman’s script, the movie is a gimmicky, frustrating bear that is a struggle to sit through.

The film’s conceit is that it features six actors portraying different sides of Dylan’s persona at different points in the musician’s life.

Beyond Blanchett, who nails the singer’s cagey rhythms just as neatly as she captured Katharine Hepburn’s intensity in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” those actors include a very good Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin, the latter of whom joins Blanchett in being the most unusual choice to play a version of Dylan since the actor is, after all, 13 years old and black.

While Haynes’ intent is obvious – he believes that Dylan is so difficult to peg, several actors, regardless of gender or race, could portray him – the follow-through is a failure. This fractured jumble of vignettes is so self-aware and dull, you wonder what’s the point of Haynes being experimental if his experiment doesn’t yield something that’s compelling or, at the very least, entertaining. Insight might have been a goal, but there’s no insight here. Instead, too much of the movie feels like a strained, artsy con.

Indeed, Haynes is so determined to deliver a piece of “art” designed to mirror the enigma that is Bob Dylan, that he makes the decision to forgo any trace of narrative structure. He’s attempting to reflect the controlled chaos of Dylan’s mind, but the result is just canned chaos for the audience. This movie could be cut any number of ways and reassembled, and it wouldn’t matter. It would remain the same movie – one that isn’t recommended.

Grade: C-

On DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray

THE BRAVE ONE, directed by Neil Jordan, written by Roderick Taylor, Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort, 122 minutes, rated R.

Neil Jordan’s “The Brave One” will remind many of “Death Wish,” the 1974 movie in which Charles Bronson took the law into his own hands after his wife’s murder and cut a bloody swath through Manhattan.

Here, Jordan flips the situation by putting renegade justice into a woman’s hands.

Jodie Foster is Erica Bain, a talk show host at a New York City-based radio station who is set to marry her fiance, David (Naveen Andrews), when, one evening in Central Park, they are brutally attacked by three skinheads. When David dies, Erica begins a long recovery in which her body heals, though her heart and mind don’t.

Frightened now by a city she no longer feels she knows, Erica purchases a gun on the black market, with the intent to protect herself should she ever find herself in that situation again.

And here is where the movie stumbles. Increasingly, it sinks into too many forced situations of vigilante justice as Erica becomes a magnet for repeated acts of violence – either against her or somebody else. Unable to contain her rage, Erica brings down all the bad guys in a hail of bullets, which gives the film energy, but the scenes will strike many as manufactured and false.

Is New York City really as violent as it’s presented here? Maybe as a whole, but many rightfully will question whether one person can be the target of such repeated violence in such a brief period of time.

Quelling most of the unintended humor are the scenes Foster shares opposite her co-star Terrence Howard, who plays the detective working the murders Erica is unleashing upon the city. They become friends, which at once allows the movie its most interesting relationship and. unfortunately, its greatest laugh just when the movie is trying to mount its dramatic peak. Mary Steenburgen and Nicky Katt are pitch-perfect in supporting roles.

Watching the movie, you wish for more of them and less of the contrivance.

Grade: C

Visit ww.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.