The central thesis of Todd Haynes’ extraordinary new film is that there is no such thing as “Bob Dylan.” He’s both the incoherent mumbler and the Eliot-inspired poet, the motorcycle-crashing pillhead and the Jews for Jesus affiliate, the socially conscious folkie and the sneering rocker—the dichotomies go on and on. This elusiveness is compounded by Dylan’s role as his era’s spokesperson (a job he spent his whole life trying to avoid), and the myriad projections he’s fielded from either side of the generation gap.

These observations are anything but original—but what is revelatory is the way Haynes exploits them in I’m Not There, a film whose scope stretches far beyond the much-discussed use of multiple actors to play fictional versions of the Dylan character. Six different films in at least as many styles weave through I’m Not There, each with its own “Dylan but not Dylan” protagonist, played by actors that include Cate Blanchett and the pubescent African-American Marcus Carl Franklin. The different characters each represent a unique strand of Dylan’s creative path, career, or persona, and all toy with notions of personal and public identity.

Bob Dylan fans are thrown treats throughout the film, with tweaked re-creations of famous Dylan moments that persist both in the popular imagination and documentaries like Don’t Look Back. Haynes takes a playful approach to the famous Newport incident: At the squelch of Dylan’s Telecaster, Pete Seeger just so happens to have a hatchet hanging nearby (what’s a folk fest without hatchets lying around everywhere?). The obnoxious, drunken hotel-room argument about a broken glass, captured in D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary, is reimagined here as a hostile standoff with a crazed bellboy (giving Blanchett the opportunity to deliver my favorite movie line of all time: “Either be groovy or leave, man!”).

Viewers who want to learn about the “Blowing in the Wind” songwriter will be frustrated by I’m Not There, to put it mildly. Similarly, audiences who like their films linear should steer clear. I’m Not There is suggestive, not instructive; poetic, not prosaic. It is also, I strongly feel after only one viewing, one of the smartest, most innovative, and beautiful films of this era.

I’M NOT THERE DIR. TODD HAYNES | RATED R | OPENS TODAY AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: bob dylan, cate blanchett, Film, i'm not there