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I'm Not There Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for language, some sexuality and nudity) Genre: Drama, Historical, Musical Theater release: November 21, 2007 by the Weinstein Company Directed by: Todd Haynes Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes Cast: Christian Bale (Pastor John / Jack Rollins), Cate Blanchett (Jude Quinn), Marcus Carl Franklin (Woody), Richard Gere (Billy), Heath Ledger (Robbie), Ben Whishaw (Arthur), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Claire), Julianne Moore (Alice) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

If you want to inspire a challenging discussion about art and culture, try this: Watch Martin Scorsese's excellent 2006 documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, and discuss it. Then, reconvene a week later for a viewing of Todd Haynes' surreal new movie I'm Not There. Their differing, complimentary portraits of Bob Dylan will give you so much material to ponder and discuss, you won't know where to begin.

To study Dylan's career is to ponder provocative questions about poetry, politics, music, politics, celebrity, spirituality, and American history. It is beyond dispute that he's an artist of skill, imagination, and vision. But he is also as human as the rest of us, a man whose missteps have been almost as spectacular as his successes.

A dictionary full of words have fallen short of describing him. He's been a rebel, a prophet, a poet … even "Judas." He's almost too big for a movie. But Haynes' film emphasizes the fact that Dylan escapes all attempts to define and explain him. Taking up a few (but only a few) strands of Dylan's career, Haynes braids them together. It's a complicated weave of periods, styles, and facets of Dylan's personality.

Christian Bale as Jack

Experiencing Haynes' ambitious vision is a little like trying to tour the Grand Canyon in two hours. The movie's whirlwind of information and ideas is both exhilarating and ultimately exhausting. Still, how often do we have this problem—a movie that gives us too much of a good thing?

Haynes tracks Dylan's emergence as a freewheelin' folk-singer fond of Woody Guthrie; his rise as a political poet of the '60s; the troubles of his personal life; his flight from exploitation; all the way to recent years, where he's become something of a recluse and a wanderer, traveling through the backwoods of American music.

Dylan's career—both onstage and off—has reminded us that poetry can convey what more didactic forms of communication cannot. His genius can be found when we examine what he has written and sung, and how his metaphors grow from—and speak back to—his audience, culture, country, and times. But, contrary to what the American people have believed, that is where it stops. When we look at Dylan himself in hopes of revelation, we're in trouble, and he knows that.

But poetry is a language that must be learned, and most of those seeking to define, categorize, and exploit the Artist are not fluent in poetry. In fact, Dylan's songs contain some of his most scathing rebukes, making fools of those who try to pin him down, even as they pat themselves on the back for trying.

To cope with those who would seek to box him in, Dylan has become an exemplary shapeshifter, answering his interrogators with jokes and riddles, always aware that a direct answer—should he ever attempt one—will be misunderstood, unraveled, and remade into a noose. And he devoutly refuses to follow any guidance but the artistic impulse, which is a still, small voice. An artist devoted to his muse is a moving target—a "rolling stone."

Cate Blanchett as Jude

Haynes has no desire to "solve" Dylan. So he casts several actors as differing manifestations of the mystery. These characters resemble Dylan. Haynes never once mentions Dylan's name, giving each "version" his (or her) own character. Each is a living, breathing metaphor, exposing differing aspects of a complex man. (One of them, in a fictional flourish, even dies of a drug overdose. We're invited to the autopsy.)

The film begins with Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody, the 11-year-old African-American version of the Artist — no, I'm not making that up. As he confesses to a couple of admiring hobos in a boxcar, "I don't know who I am most of the time." It's as if he's channeling a who's-who of American bards and poets, from Whitman to Guthrie, while his own identity remains elusive.

Personifying the Artist cornered by the persistently oblivious reporters, Arthur (Ben Wishaw) answers questions with wry, weary retorts, quoting directly from Dylan's library of challenging (some would say "cryptic") interviews.

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