Im Not There

Allusions and Techniques

Focus Questions (what you should be able to answer by the end)

1. What allusions are present in the film? 2. How are these created through techniques? 3. Why should Im Not There be considered a pastiche?

Allusion
Haynes has stated: theres nothing in the script thats

my own.
This is a pretty big statement to make, but is a strong

representation of how reliant Haynes is on allusion across this film. Basically, everything in the film is a reference to something else.
This makes good sense in terms of the wider intention

of the film: the undermining of any sense of authenticity.

Visual Allusion

These are rife throughout the film, with specific references to: - No Direction Home - the Martin Scorcese documentary about Dylans life that we watched a lot of when doing Dylans biography - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid - the Sam Peckinpah documentary that shapes the look of the Billy sequences

- 8 1/2 - the surreal Federico Fellini film (which we will watch a couple of sequences from) that shapes the look of the Jude sequences
- The films of Jean-Luc Godard - (we wont be studying this) his visual style - lots of long lenses and wide lenses - shapes the Robbie sequences. As well as specific references like the gun shots of each character.

Allusion in the words

A lot of dialogue and voice over is also drawn directly

from other texts, in particular the Playboy interview that I handed out.
Have a look at these two clips...

Technique to Allusion
Mise-en-scene

Dialogue
Voiceover Film stocks/colour

Pastiche
A pastiche is a work of art, literature, music, or

architecture that openly imitates the work of a previous artist.

And so the form of the film really nicely represents this

wider thinking about the nature of identity:

It is certain that neither men nor women are clearly

defined personalities but rather vibrations, flows, schizzes and knots.

Pastiche
All of this stuff works to distance the viewer from the emotional

connection we are used to in a film. We are meant to be cool spectators, rather than becoming lost in the diegesis. There is meant to be intellectual reflection, rather than heightened emotive response.
We are be given the opportunity to see the film as in-authentic, to have

no essence, no identity. And I think that we are meant to transfer that understanding to the subject of the film. We are meant to see him in the same we see the film - as having no fundamental essence, no fundamental identity. And this is all there to challenge our traditional sense of identity as fixed and knowable. Just like the film, we are always already something else.

Focus Questions (what you should be able to answer by the end)

1. What allusions are present in the film? 2. How are these created through techniques? 3. Why should Im Not There be considered a pastiche?