This movie would have been perfect without Richard Gere.

See, he's immersed in a segment of the movie where the Dillon character has retreated from society into a back-woods western town and he's like (is?) Billy the Kid and the town is called Riddle, and is populated with all these gorgeously decorated kids and people wearing wonderful costumes and there's this rich texture and popping colors everywhere and the accents are immersive and mother fucker Richard Gere is like, "Hi, I'm Richard Gere. Someone gave me these pages with words on them so I'm going to say them aloud. I'm still playing Richard Gere so I'm really confused about what's going on. My dog's missing, that's what this scene is about, right?" And he can't ride a horse. The horse looked like he wanted to toss him off the whole goddamned scene. Fuck Richard Gere in his tight little fuckhole anus without a drop of lube. You haven't heard the phrase, "Profoundly missed the fucking point" more accurately applied to anything more than Richard Gere in this film. I mean seriously, he's surrounded by this rich theater and he's like, "Hi, I'm Richard Gere."

Fuck you, Richard Gere. I hope you choke on a sewer rat and die in a horrible subway accident.

The reason his segment pissed me off so much is because it was absolutely necessary for the film to be complete. There are all these aspects of Dillon and the film follows them and interweaves them and tries to see what would've happened if Bob became a preacher after he was tired of the activist thing, what if he'd been an actor, all machismo, with a wife and daughters he couldn't cope with, what if his life had been all about this vitriolic relationship with the press and his audience, what if he'd been an outlaw on the run but in love with music and the Dust Bowl era, as a young child enamored with the world or as an adult, reclusive and hiding from it.

The sequences hurtle forward together, and the film isn't cut like a color bar, more like a marbled slice of beef.

The black child traveling the country in boxcars calling himself Woody Guthrie is beautiful and evocative and rich in color, gold and green, and the actor portraying the child is terrific beyond belief. Christian Bale as Jack Rollins is shy, and authentically uncomfortable in his skin  as early activist Dillon and I'm surprised by the sensitivity of his performance. As always, he shocks with his chameleon ability to adapt to a role - both as the folk singer and Father Jack the preacher later in his life (his is the only Dillon we see twice.) The early segments shot in black and white are reminiscent of a sixties documentary and Bale looks like he's on a newsreel half the time with a washed out film strip.

Heath Ledger as the brutally male Robbie Clark (there's no other way to put it) version of Dillon as an internationally famous actor is extremely affecting because it's a love story that's told backwards and shot through a very romantic lens that turns into marriage and children and infidelity and his life slowly starts to decay.

Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, Dillon in London, having gone Electric and every concert is a war zone with his audience when they stand up in the balcony and call him Judas and then riot the stage, when a woman stands outside the venue and lights herself on fire, when the BBC tries to conduct a character-assassination, when a fan dressed as a waiter tries to stab him in his hotel room and through it all, Jude takes some more amphetamines and goes on stage, goes on interviews, turns the camera around on the interviewers and exposes them in turn, gives the Beatles pot and hangs out with Allen Ginsberg (a remarkably restrained and effective David Cross). The lighting is luminiscent black and white, and there is a party scene that is more trippy than many deliberate attempts at psychadelia. This is the best segment but that's a best among equals sort of thing. Except for Richard Gere, of course.

And we haven't talked about the music, yet. Which are any number of rich, evocative covers of the originals and permeate the whole film with such a soundtrack that I'm looking to pick it up right away.

This is a remarkable and beautiful and evocative film in spite of fucking Richard Gere. Watch it on the big screen if you get a chance.