by Jason Cox 

With six leading actors playing the role of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There looks on its surface like the work of a director who stubbornly refused to make any choices (or the work of a casting agent run amok). But with a modest understanding of its rock icon subject and perhaps a look at films of its genre that took a more standard path, an argument can made that director Todd Haynes has made the best film of its kind, a brilliant study of all the biopic touchstone themes: identity, fame, and deception. 

Never has a biopic film brought so much creativity to itself as a concept. The celebrity biopic is a genre of its own, but instead of falling back on the conventions of the genre, Haynes’ film has ingrained its very structure at the core components to mirror its subject. By most accounts, Bob Dylan has an identity in flux, shifting personas to fit the decade so well he's like a Forrest Gump that could learn.

As explained, Dylan is played by six actors, ranked by quality of character and performance below:

1. Cate Blanchett (aka "Jude") - Dylan at the height of his fame and popularity. Blanchett gets the most screen time of all the Dylans, and as weird as it sounds, looks the most like Dylan of all the actors. Casting Blanchett was Haynes most audacious move, and the Blanchett character arc is his most liberated and free form. Example: Blanchett lies in a casket as a narrator gives a eulogy to Dylan, but last anyone looked Dylan isn't dead yet.* This also happens at the beginning of the film, ironically.

Best Line: “Either be groovy or leave, man.”

2. Marcus Carl Franklin (aka "Fake") Perhaps not the best Dylan but the most important, because if his performance is anything less than astounding the film wouldn't work. Like Blanchett, Franklin, a short 12 year old black kid,  is introduced early into the film (new rule: lead with the weird?) and therefore Dylan as Bullshitter is an idea we grasp early on.

Best Line: “Truth is, my mind got mixed with ramblin’ when I was oh so young.” 

3. Heath Ledger (aka "Star of Electricity") - The Dylan villain, he dabbles in misogyny, entitlement, and bad parenting. Interesting that the superstar Dylan is the only one with a

domesticated family life. His best line, especially the way it is delivered, is the best of the best lines.

Best Line: “I don’t pick what I sing about, it picks me. And some of it ain’t pretty. How are you going to change anything if you only sing about what’s pretty.“

4. Ben Whishaw (aka "Poet") I still can’t believe this is the bathtub suicide from A Cloud Atlas and Q from Skyfall, as the actor is unrecognizably given the worst hair and the least personality in the film. Whishaw, though, does get to deliver some of the best lines, looking straight into the camera addressing an offscreen municipal proceeding. Whishaw doesn’t have much to do but he is effective at the meager tasks he is given.

Best Line: “A song is something that walks by itself.”

5. Christian Bale (aka "Prophet”) The folk singer Dylan portrayed by Bale would probably top this list if Bale’s voice was actually doing the singing. The vocal talents for early folk Dylan and an older reborn zealous Dylan, both portrayed by Bale, were tasked out to Mason Jennings and John Doe, respectively. Points for Bale that like Ledger and Blanchett he seems to be very much “in” on the joke.

Best Line: “All they want from me are finger pointing songs. I only got ten fingers.”

6. Richard Gere - (aka "Outlaw") Dylan as reclusive wanderer is the least believable persona Dylan is said to espouse, so it’s fitting that Gere's performance is the least convincing in the film. Gere lives in a small town economically supported by a traveling circus, that is until a few thickly material businessman buy the land and intend to shut it down. The dying circus is a good metaphor for this era: Dylan as the aging and failing hero amongst a failed menagerie is the ending life isn’t fair enough to give us. Bonus points: My Morning Jacket's Jim James belts out a show-stopping rendition of “Going to Acalpulco”, a top tier for-the-hell-of-it musical number.

Best line: “The more you live a certain way, the less it feels like freedom.”

So let's take everything described above and compare it to the likes of Walk The Line, La Vie En Rose, and Ray, all fine films, all very standard entries in the biopic genre. Notice primarily how similar those 3 are in terms of narrative arc and ask yourself: doesn’t the description above sound more interesting? Perhaps I’m Not There has more of a taste for the virtuoso? Give it the test Roger Ebert gave in a Goodfellas vs. Dances With Wolves scenario: which would you rather see again?

While I'm Not There could rival Return of the King in the number of false endings, ultimately the real one is beautiful and perfect. Having the real Bob Dylan perform on stage before a pensively slow fade to black is one of film's most beautiful endings. To see the legend riffing on his harmonica, seemingly very spontaneously moving from note to note, is very fitting: it's what he's doing with us all along. 

*Death may be a relative term in this case. I saw Dylan in 2006 at a minor league baseball stadium in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, westernly dressed with a black gaucho hat. It seems less and less music is needed to be Dylan these days, as he stammered through lyrics and fumbled the keys of a keyboard (no guitar at all, conveniently placed so as to face the audience in a side profile. It was the most incognito performance possible. One could only guess who should play The 7th Dylan to commemorate the era we now live in.