The gray-haired musician in the loose-fitting shirt then turns and stands before the screen and plays, unannounced, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "All Along the Watchtower," two Bob Dylan songs from the 1967 album "John Wesley Harding." He plays gently and fiercely before the room darkens and "I'm Not There" begins its keenly edited exploration of Dylan, who he has been, what we have wanted him to be, how it all interrelates, and does not.
Lucid notes from the mandolin's shimmering strings - alive only briefly - reinforce an obvious but often overlooked point: The images and sounds, the ideas and acting that follow on-screen, come from specific moments of creation.
Such a random reminder about the virtue of originality can be reason enough, in an age of multiplexes and mega-studios, for a filmgoer to seek out one of the remaining independent cinemas. But string together a New England road trip to several of them - catching six films on six screens in three states over a 50-hour stretch, for example - and the journey itself becomes cinematic.
What does one singer's journey have to do with your own? And corn in the American diet? Who knew that the rope would snap in a canal in India, and what that would bring? Which movie next? Where? Why?
Or consider the sense of solitude that comes after an evening show, when walking into the darkened streets of an unknown town. Little things loom large. Which happened first: Did you see or hear the flat tire on the car rolling down Main Street?
