Todd Haynes’ highly anticipated riff on Bob Dylan finally arrives, garlanded in Venice Film Festival glory and a Best Actress award for Blanchett.
In this audacious experiment, six actors each represent one of seven distinct stages in Dylan’s life. There’s a young, rails-ridin’, guitar-slingin’ black kid named Woody (Franklin). Portraying ‘Jude’, Blanchett channels the man in his controversial transition from acoustic to electric – captured in stunning, Pennebaker-esque black & white. A religious phase and Peckinpah-style adventure are also onscreen, all interwoven in a nonchronological, visually kaleidoscopic patchwork, stitched together with inspired new covers of classic Dylan tracks.
Idiosyncratic? Absolutely. This is breathtaking, risk-taking cinema.