In late 2008, Joaquin Phoenix threw the entertainment industry for a loop when he offhandedly mentioned his permanent retirement from acting in the pursuit of a rap career. Over the course of the following two years, his weight ballooned along with a wild shock of hair and a beard that could make Jeff Lebowski jealous. His increasingly erratic, obtuse television and press appearances (including an inaugural rap performance) fueled rumors of a meltdown even as seemingly inside information pointed at the debacle as an elaborate ruse. This was later confirmed by Affleck himself, not even two weeks after the film saw release. I'll try to sum things up using as few sarcastic quotation marks as possible.
The "mockumentary" follows a fairly linear format, filming Phoenix as he abandons acting in favor of his real dream: rapping. Nervous foul-mouthed breakdowns ensue throughout aimless, meandering sequences of obnoxious, drug influenced behavior. It's like watching a bizarro version of 8 Mile without any purpose or narrative structure. Some sequences abandon any pretense of reality and become exaggerated to the point of disbelief as the film takes on a tone that seems almost antagonistic towards its audience. Despite an unfortunate use of the word "faggot", a parade of full frontal male nudity, and pretentious soul searching montages I'd still hesitate to classify this as a mockumentary or even the brand of discomfort comedy that's become popular in the past decade. It's definitely painful to sit through, but clearly the creative team here is nowhere near the league of Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais, or Larry David, though Andy Kaufman seems the most obvious influence.
The only real poignant moment arrives in the form of a metaphor from Edward James Olmos on the transitive nature of fame and perseverance. What would have been the high point of any other movie just serves to reflect all the tedium surrounding it.
The bigger pieces of media coverage are woven through the film quite well and there's some fascination to be had by guessing if the other celebrities were in on the joke, but overall I'm Not There feels about ten times longer than its hour and forty minutes. Even if they had maintained their gamesmanship long after the movie released, the legitimacy would have added only marginal interest to an utterly boring film. Maybe try to focus harder on the "mock" part of "mockumentary" next time.
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