The elusiveness and contradictory nature of the life and career of Bob Dylan is one which defies any standard rock biopic treatment, so who better than the unconventional filmmaker Todd Haynes to set about trying to weave some kind of coherent film? The result is a Fellinian free-form collage with no real narrative thrust, but which somehow seems to capture the essence of this most over-analysed but little understood musician.

The ‘Dylan’ psyche is actually split into several different parts, none of whom are actually called Bob Dylan. In purely biographical order, though the film actually freely cuts between the stories, there is the 11-year old Woody Guthrie obsessed Dylan played by Marcus Carl Franklin, the young adult ‘Arthur Rimbaud’ played by Ben Whishaw, the folk-era Dylan and later born-again pastor portrayed by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett as the ‘Judas’-era electric Dylan, Heath Ledger as the ‘Blood on the Tracks’/’Desire’ period divorced Dylan, and finally Richard Gere as an ageing Dylan somehow transported back to the Wild West as Billy the Kid. It makes sense to have different faces for the different guises: and, lest we forget, ‘Bob Dylan’ itself was a mask hiding the real Robert Zimmerman.

It is clear from all of those basic descriptions that a clear idea of Dylan’s biography is necessary before stepping into the cinema. This is not a biopic which allows the viewer to sit back and be passive observers into another life, as with the likes of the recent Walk the Line or Ray – films which require no real prior knowledge of the artist in question, as important biographical events will all be clearly portrayed. I’m Not There requires the constant attention of a somewhat knowledgeable viewer, otherwise it could easily appear too confusing and unfocused. Perhaps the perfect aperitif to this is Martin Scorsese’s superior Dylan documentary No Direction Home (2005).

The strange structure and at times bizarre symbolism in fact render this closer to the likes of 8½ (1963), the Fellini ‘film about the making of a film’. There are clear homages, specifically to two of the film’s most famous early scenes: Mastroianni trapped in his car in a traffic jam, and then imagining himself floating midair like a balloon tethered by a piece of string. The Fellini connection is hammered home by the use in one scene of Nino Rota’s theme from Casanova. There are thematic similarities between the two films: in particular, the Cate Blanchett sequences explore the pressure Dylan feels from his expectant fans and the ever-circling critical vultures, in much the same way that Mastroianni is hemmed in by similar forces throughout 8½.

The segment that feels closest to straight-on biopic material is perhaps the Heath Ledger scenes; his Dylan is going through the messy divorce proceedings with his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and there are flashbacks to happier times during their courtship. Elsewhere, there are other clear biographical points: the Julianne Moore character is a clear representation of Joan Baez, and the documentary aesthetic complete with the use of appropriate film stock and shooting style almost make these sections feel authentic. Except we all know the Julianne Moore was not a folk singer in the 1960s. Was she?

The film is exhilarating at times, though at other times it drags a little – the Richard Gere segments seem slow and meaningless, and at 135 minutes long with no real plot to follow it can get a little bewildering. But its great moments make the rather less so ones worthwhile; a fantastic symbolism-loaded sequence accompanied by Ballad of a Thin Man, where a critic of Blanchett’s character has a series of Fellini-esque visions resulting from his realization that ‘something is happening that he doesn’t know what it is’ with Dylan’s new musical direction is utterly mesmeric, as are so many other snippets here and there. In many ways it is reminiscent of watching some of the great Italian director’s post-La Dolce Vita work, such as Roma or Amarcord: even if meaning is not immediately obvious, one has to admire the sheer craft behind it all.

Haynes is a fascinating director, and enjoys playing with audience preconceptions. His last film, the wonderful Far From Heaven (2002) used the template of Douglas Sirk melodrama to highlight the acceptability of racism and homophobia of 1950s America. His controversial early biopic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) was a serious-minded exploration of the problem of anorexia and the effect of fame on one vulnerable individual, serious despite it being portrayed entirely using Barbie dolls. That he would attempt such a daring project as this, then, is no real surprise, but it does appear to seal his reputation as one of the most extraordinary filmmakers working in Hollywood today, a reputation which had taken a dent after the critical and commercial failure of the misunderstood classic Velvet Goldmine (1998).

“Art is the lie through which we see the truth”, said Pablo Picasso, and this film seems to encapsulate that idea: that it is only through these six unreal Dylans that it is possible to get any handle on the mess of contradictions which makes up this artist, and indeed any artist, any human being. In trying to create something, we take our mish-mash of life experiences, our triumphs and failures, our childhood reminiscences and our desires for the future, and try to form something coherent out of them, to which people can relate to. But ultimately what is communicated is personal to the viewer, and open to misinterpretation. Dylan, like Guido in 8½, becomes acutely aware of this, but chooses to embrace it rather than to hide away from it; to accept his contradictory position with all of the trappings which come along with it. This hugely ambitious film tries in some way to reconcile the man and the myths.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a successful and popular magazine publisher when, at the age of 42, he suffered a massive stroke, leaving him almost completely paralysed. Almost, since he was still able to control one part of his anatomy – his left eye. Remarkably, with the assistance of a group of therapists and helpers, he was able to ‘dictate’ a memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in this state. The book is a unique piece of non-fiction, singular in its conveyance of what it was like to have so-called ‘locked-in syndrome’.

A remarkable book, but not one which would immediately scream out to be turned into a motion picture. So it is to director Julian Schnabel’s immense credit that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly does justice to its source text. At times compellingly tender, other times somewhat darkly comic, it successfully steers a path away from over-sentimentality to present the story in the best, and perhaps only, way possible.

Much of the film, inevitably, is viewed from the first-person perspective of Bauby, played remarkably by Mathieu Amalric. Not that you would initially know though, as we do not see his face until he glimpses a reflection of himself in a window – we are shocked by what he has been reduced to, as is he, likening his appearance to having been dipped in formaldehyde. The use of the first-person view is uniquely rendered by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski – complete with blinking, delay in the shifting of focusing, and at one stage the blur of tears rinsing the screen. In one horrifying scene, we see a doctor stitching up his right eye, naturally from the inside – as visceral and fleshy as anything David Cronenberg has done.

Bauby ‘dictates’ by having the other party read the alphabet, letters ordered according to frequency of use, until he blinks, indicating the letter he wishes to use, until words and then sentences begin to be formed. At times early on, the subtitling becomes a little confused – when ‘merci’ is being spelled out, the subtitles read T H A N K S. But this is only to be expected, and becomes less of a problem as the film goes on. American director Schnabel has been at pains to point out that the film exists only in French, learning the language especially in order to make it in its original form. And there is something more poetic, almost more romantic, about the alphabet recited in French as opposed to English – especially if it is a beautiful French woman doing the reading, as Bauby (always one with an eye for the ladies) is keen to note.

The film is able to explore the various implications of Bauby’s state; unable to speak to his immobile father on the telephone, play with his children, or merely to speak to men delivering to his room a new speakerphone. This is the eponymous diving bell – a coffin sinking him to the bottom of the sea, all the time his fast, active mind unable to articulate itself from its static metal case. And in one especially painful moment, we see the mother of his children having to act as intermediary translator when his mistress telephones his hospital bed; his refusal to rebuff her advances, despite everything, shows that he is no hero – just a flawed, selfish man like any other.

One pair of scenes stand out more than others. A pre-stroke Bauby goes to visit his immobile father Papinou, played with typical pathos by Max Von Sydow. Bauby is very much his father’s son – quick witted, sarcastic, with an eye for the ladies. But Papinou is now ‘locked in’ himself – he is unable to leave his apartment, so Bauby goes in order to give him a shave, where they trade fairly innocuous verbal blows. The significance of the scene is illustrated later, when Papinou calls Bauby’s hospital room, and the two men are, for differing reasons, unable to fully articulate themselves. But there is a common, unspoken bond there, and it is at this point the film punches home the true tragedy of the situation; Bauby, for all of his sexual philandering and bad life choices is still a son, as well as a father, now deprived of being able to conduct relationships with people in a conventional way.

Julian Schnabel has made a very, very special film here. I immediately thought of one of the all time great films, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, in which a man faced with the death sentence of cancer is first driven into despair, but then comes to find meaning to his life in creating something – a children’s playground. In that film, the central character Watanabe is no saint – emotionally distant, a workaholic with little time for others – but in his perilous state comes to realise that maybe before he wasn’t really living, or engaging with life. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly deals with a similar subject matter, in a similarly subtle, affecting way; Bauby may have found himself trapped in a straightjacket, but it made him realise the fleeting nature of life, the painful loss of experience to memory, but the need to find new joys in life, whatever one’s situation.

Paul Thomas Anderson can easily be accused of being a ‘critic’s director’; his films are never populist, usually entirely lacking in easily-understandable narrative structure, and stylistically innovative enough to be labelled ‘arty’ by the majority. There Will Be Blood is no exception; always seemingly on the verge of being fully comprehensible, yet daring and complex enough to still demand the greatest attention in the viewer.

There was a time when P.T.A. was being bandied around as the ‘new Robert Altman’, but this film should be the final nail in that particular label’s coffin (though this film is dedicated to the late director). The influence of his mentor could be felt in Boogie Nights and Magnolia: both ensemble pieces, with large star casts masterfully rotated. But Anderson was also developing his own signature style, which perhaps became more obvious with Punch-Drunk Love, his superlative 2002 dark comedy, whose hugely distinctive visuals and use of sound left a great impression from what was a surprisingly straightforward tale.

There is, on the surface of it, quite a conventional storyline here too: Daniel Plainview is a self-labelled ‘oil man’, who as a young man digging for silver comes across a large crude oil deposit, inspiring him initially to amateurly extract the oil, and later to set up his own drilling company with proper equipment and hired hands. As he becomes more and more successful, his ambition grows and he sets about trying to build a larger and larger oil empire, distancing himself from the larger companies by claiming himself a ‘family man’ running ‘family business’.

We quickly learn, however, that this is bogus; his ‘son’, whom he parades in front of potential investors, is not his, merely a prop to improve his image. When a young man, Paul Sunday, tells him of his family’s oil-rich land, Plainview travels there to purchase the property under the pretence of wanting it to hunt quail on. We begin to see what kind of character we are dealing with: selfish, a compulsive liar, Machiavellian to the point of inhumanity, driven only by the prospect of more oil, and more money. Plainview reckons without Sunday’s twin brother, Eli, who fancies himself as a Churchman and faith healer, and immediately cottons on to Plainview’s plan, demanding a much larger sum of money for the land, in the knowledge that Plainview will cough up.

This is the basic setup of the film, and to describe further narrative points may be to spoil the real joy of watching, since it is almost impossible to outguess where it is leading the viewer. Like Punch-Drunk Love, what seems like a simple, conventional story takes enough twists and turns to constantly wrong-foot even the most perceptive of watchers. This is, in large part, due to the strange presence at the centre of the film: Daniel Plainview. He is a man with no past, and seemingly no future other than one of relentless financial expansion. Seldom does he refer to anything in his life, and when he does it seems to be a fiction of convenience: inventing his ‘wife’s’ death in childbirth to garner sympathy, for example.

Citizen Kane comparisons have been made by other reviewers elsewhere: it has been pointed out that the theme of the corrupting infuence of money at the expense of a character’s soul happens to Daniel Plainview as it does to Charles Foster Kane. The film does share a common timespan with Welles’ classic, starting around the turn of the twentieth century, and ending with its protagonist as an old, lonely man in his empty mansion, taking in the Great Depression of the 1930s. But Plainview is no tragic figure like Kane, as he is entirely devoid of any redeeming qualities; he has no time for family, for friends, for women, for leisure or enjoyment, for anything other than the pursuit of oil. There is, thus, no Rosebud – no crack revealing the human underneath the skin of the monster.

Daniel Day-Lewis once again gives a bravura performance in the central role, less over-the-top compared with his extraordinary turn in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, but his quiet pent-up rage is all the more terrifying for being more hidden in Plainview; when he finally does explode, you feel it hit you all the harder. In his finest moment in the film, he delivers a monologue where he shows his contempt for all other people, and his desire to see himself succeed while everybody else fails – and finally we see the grotesque monster in its true form; entirely devoid of compassion, life, love. His performance is so overpowering that Paul Dano’s excellent turn as preacher Eli Sunday appears to have been largely ignored.

There has been much praise heaped on the film, and Day-Lewis’ performance in particular. But great acting demands a director capable of controlling it, and once again Paul Thomas Anderson has shown that he is one of the finest actor’s directors working today. But he is also one of the great contemporary visual stylists, too. His composition of shots can be quite breathtaking, and the slow, languid movements of the camera, frequently only revealing the spatial dimensions of a scene piece-by-piece, are especially daring, recalling not just Welles but by turns Kubrick, Scorsese, Fellini even the granddaddy of them all, Jean Renoir. There are noticeably long takes, but also frantic fast cuts, elegant pans – Anderson, with DP Robert Elswit, seems capable of executing them all with ease.

One reason Punch-Drunk Love was so distinctive was the fantastic percussive score, composed by frequent collaborator Jon Brion. Here, the music was composed by Radiohead multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, who seems to have taken his cue from Anderson’s prior work, whilst adding his own touches. The film opens with an abrasive screech of strings, and the first reel plays to pizzicato violins, giving an unsettling air to proceedings. The score then is a mish mash of Brahms quartet, percussion, and more abrasive string parts. It is a truly outstanding soundtrack, and, like Brion’s work, gives Anderson’s film its rhythm and feel. It is a shame that it will not be eligible for the Oscars, as it would surely win.

It is tempting to label There Will Be Blood as a masterpiece, and it already has by some noted critics. But I have my doubts; I left the cinema in a daze, illustrating just what an extraordinary experience to watch it is. But the Coens’ No Country For Old Men, Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE gave me more of a feeling of satisfaction, that I had watched something truly great. P.T. Anderson may well be the best director in the US, Daniel Day-Lewis the best actor working in English, and There Will Be Blood a fine film, but it is perhaps too difficult a film to be a bona-fide masterpiece. But it is such a demanding watch on first viewing, that maybe I just need to see it again….

Sidney Lumet is the very definition of a ‘veteran director’, having been making films since 1957’s Twelve Angry Men, more than half of the duration of cinema’s relatively short history. Along the way, he has given us the likes of Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Hill and Network to name but a few. However, the latter, the last of his great films, came in 1976, and has been off the boil for quite a significant time; the dire likes of A Stranger Among Us, in which Melanie Griffith has to solve a crime by going undercover in the Hassidic Jewish community, seem almost too ridiculous to be true. So it is with a degree of relief to report that Lumet’s new film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a perfectly watchable thriller, intruiging in design, and a set of strong performances from its leads. But, contrary to some opinions, it is no masterpiece.

Familial ties never looked so close, or as strained, as they do here; Andy and Hank, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke respectively, are brothers who are both in dire need of money: Andy to feed his out of control spending on his drug habits, Hank to pay his estranged wife and daughter. Andy has a seemingly simple plan: to rob a ‘mom and pop’-run jewellery store when the owners are out and a half-blind old lady is looking after the place; the insurance cover would make the crime essentially a victimless one, he adds unconvincingly. There is, however, one problem: it is their parents’ store. Things inevitably go horribly wrong, and the brothers find themselves in more than a spot of bother.

The film is contructed in an unusually non-linear way; we begin with the robbery, but time jumps backwards and forwards through the course of the film, revealing new details about the relationships between the brothers, their parents and various third parties, most significantly Andy’s wife, played by an almost perpetually topless Marisa Tomei. While initially this seems an interesting device, coherently guiding us through the narrative, it eventually runs out of steam, jarring past the first half of the duration.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is undeniably the greatest character actor working in Hollywood today, and here again he delivers a new, unique, fully-fleshed-out character from his seemingly bottomless stock of personalities. The relationship between himself and Ethan Hawke’s Hank is suitably tense, with the believable air of a slightly frosty fraternal bond, despite the complete lack of mutual physical resemblance. Albert Finney as their father is solid as ever, though his role is slightly thankless, as is Marisa Tomei’s.

Some reviews have gushed about the film, raving about its tight construction, moral unsettlingness and its suspenseful air of tension. Some of these have overstepped the mark somewhat; Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an impressive piece of work, especially for an 80-plus year-old director whose recent form has been so poor, but it is also strangely unsatisfying, not sufficiently fleshed out in parts, and thinks itself a little too clever for its own good.

The awarding of the Palme D’Or at Cannes has become increasingly politicized in recent years; most significantly perhaps with Michael Moore’s victory in 2004 for the highly undeserving Fahrenheit 9/11, and a maybe a little more subtly in 2006 when Ken Loach won for The Wind That Shakes the Barley, there is the impression that the prize award is not so much for technical brilliance as it is for artistic and political intent. So when the 2007 Golden Palm was awarded to this Romanian drama with its thinly-veiled attack on anti-abortionism, critics were quick to declare that this was once again a deliberately political decision by the Cannes jury.

The film has certainly proved controversial; the Vatican of course denounced it, and screenings in countries where there is partial or complete prohibition of abortion have been limited, understandably given the polemical nature of the work. But this censure and censorship only goes to demonstrate just how powerful a work this is, and how effectively it communicates its central message: that the consequence of making the procedure illegal is to drive it underground, where it becomes clandestine, messy, unsanitary and most certainly dangerous.

The woman at the centre of the film is not the pregnant Găbiţa, but her roommate at college Otilia, who is helping her friend procure the termination. The film follows her on the day of the abortion, starting with their mundane early-morning preparations in their dorm. From early on, there is a clear sense of a time and a place; we are clearly still in the midst of the Communist Ceauşescu regime, as evidenced by the ever-present rationing, queueing for essentials and heightened security in public places. But the film offers no critique of this regime, this is merely the setting, and in a sense this could be anywhere, as long as that anywhere was somewhere with the laws that are about to be broken. As much as the film does not critique the Communist regime, neither does it seek to glamourise or romanticise about it, a trap that some recent films, most notably The Lives of Others, partially falls into.

The content of the film is unflinching, but never feels like exploitation, suggestive but not overly graphic. Director Mungiu seems to intuitively know what needs to be shown, and to show no more than this. The abortionist carries a case with him, alluding to a ‘probe’ in his description of the procedure; he eventually leaves the scene and Otilia, like us, has a morbid curiousity as to what the instruments he is about to use look like, and so quickly rummages through his case. In a scene highly reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, we see quick glimpses of these cold metal objects, and we have already seen enough. Indeed, it is during the extended ‘bartering’ scene where the real horror of the situation emerges.

The filming style is mostly handheld, giving a cinéma-vérité feel similar to that employed by those other Palme D’Or winners the Dardenne Brothers, and lending a gritty feel to proceedings, particularly effective in one scene towards the end where Otilia must locate a high-rise apartment block, for reasons which will become all-too-clear on viewing the film. The cinematography is desaturated, with greens and sickly blue-greys dominating a dark colour palette, adding to the air of queasiness that no-doubt in stirred by proceedings.

But the film is not about mise-en-scene; as I mentioned before, while this is clearly set in a time and a place, late 1980s Romania, this is almost an irrelevance to the storyline. What is key is the choice facing the characters; we are never told how Găbiţa has become pregnant, but we don’t need to be told this – the fear in actress Laura Vasiliu’s eyes when she is talking to the abortionist is enough to tell us all we need to know. It is actually left to her friend Otilia, scolding her boyfriend’s somewhat uncaring attitude to the situation, to raise the issue of what would happen if she were to fall pregnant, for the audience to consider the alternative to abortion. Găbiţa’s silence on the subject speaks louder than words.

The two central female performances are both extraordinary, but in different ways; while Laura Vasiliu’s Găbiţa is so completely fearful of what is about to happen, there is a steely resolve in Anamaria Marinca’s Otilia trhoughout, even though at times we can sense the same level of fear. Contrast that with a scene where she must temporarily leave her friend to go to a dinner party across town; at that party, older people laugh and joke and discuss recipies, but all the time Otilia is silent, wishing to be elsewhere, and still unable fully to comprehend what has happened, and fearful what is yet to come.

Much is beginning to be made about the so-called ‘New Romanian Cinema’, with Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ winning the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, and critical acclaim enjoyed by the likes of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and 12:08 East of Bucharest showing the beginnings of a high quality of output from that part of the world. But as with all of these patterns, we must not forget that these films stand alone as great pieces of work, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days may well prove to be the best of the lot.