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I’m Not There (2007) by Todd Haynes 

Many people hate this movie. People call it mean names. Of course, admittedly, it is insane and confusing and messy and incomplete and out of control. But what a perfect movie. I call it a perfect movie for all its flaws.

The true strength of this movie isn’t even Cate Blanchett, like most critics say, though she is absolutely magnificent and the greatest ever. I personally think the critics want to detract from Todd Haynes’ unbridled genius and achievement in imagination because they are envious of it (hell, I’m freaking dying of jealousy over here) and because he makes movies he wants to make however he wants to make it without any regards to their metatheories or philosophies or whatever and doesn’t give a fuck what they might or might not think.  

The true strength of this movie, for me, is in its guts to be absolutely free-spirited despite the usual constraints of a biopic. This movie (like all the other perfect movies by insane, confusing, messy, incomplete, out of control filmmakers) just proves that anything is possible in a movie, that a movie doesn’t have to be anything.

It doesn’t need to have a designated and pre-established market, it doesn’t need to target the dudes or the chicks, it doesn’t need a nice genre it could fit right into. It doesn’t need mind tricks, it doesn’t need a complicated premise. It doesn’t need to be taught to the audience like a biology teacher teaches photosynthesis. It’s not photosynthesis and so it doesn’t need to be explained. It shouldn’t be “this is what this is about and this is how it works”. It should be “look!”

Creativity doesn’t need a new reality. It doesn’t need to assert itself, shove itself down the audience’s throats, and batter the eardrums. A story is not a science. It doesn’t have a formula and it doesn’t need a cheap twist at the end to wrap up. Real freedom on the silver screen is brought about by real imagination, not a massive budget and an idea much smaller than the massive budget, popped like a kernel of corn to justify the costs.

Our reality is 10-months pregnant with infinite possibilities and crazy ideas and way too many mysteries for any of us to even dare consider at once. We can’t put everything about the world in three hours no matter how hard we try, so to try to do so is not really a filmmaker’s goal. A film is an impression. A story is a revelation. If a movie can let us glimpse at even a fraction of a moment of the mess of a reality that we live in, it then becomes perfect in my eyes.

This perfect movie knows how to tell comprehensible truths about Bob Dylan and music and youth and humanity and a whole generation and America, etc. It captures the chaos and multiplicity of a time and its heart. And shit, what a freaking incredible soundtrack. The movie is about music! All music is holy, Kurt Vonnegut said.