Arguably the fatal flaw of contemporary biography is the notion of strict adherence to truth with little regard for legend.

The Man
Amidst the currently fashionable trend of musical biopics, to omit the world-shaking likes of Bob Dylan seems a capital crime. Yet, the prospect of a work to do him proper justice is as daunting as they come. Dylan casts a mighty large shadow over popular culture.

To fill it, Director Todd Haynes calls on a boy, four men and one woman. Arguably the fatal flaw of contemporary biography is the notion of strict adherence to truth with little regard for legend. Cultural icons are not simply just individuals and their work, but the collective sum of our own unique interpretations.

“I’m Not There” aims to conjoin fact, fiction, timeless aspects and historical context, from an experimental distance of artistic rendering.

Haynes is no stranger to fictional takes on actual people. Using the same technique, albeit with more discretion, 1998’s “Velvet Goldmine” placed the spotlight on the beginnings of glam rock in the 1970s.

By using fictional doppelgangers, Haynes was able to showcase the rise of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, freely addressing their ambiguous personal and professional relationship against a larger musical movement.

“I’m Not There” is so equally loaded with cultural baggage, that to analyze it as a film seems almost futile. It is not a self-contained piece of art, yet, it is decidedly not a definitive account of Dylan’s life by any means.

Those looking for the Joe Friday report should probably look elsewhere. Where most biographies attempt to give a photo-realistic snapshot, the chapters in “I’m Not There” seem like rough charcoal etchings, influenced more by feeling than by fact.

The Myth
The youngest of the Dylans is a train-hopping juvenile vagabond Woody, impressively played by the young Marcus Carl Franklin. Curiously possessed by depression-era consciousness in 1959, he provides a sort of stylistic homecoming for early Dylan songs like “Tombstone Blues,” which coming from himself and accompanying Delta musicians sound delightfully un-translated by Dylan’s musical interpretations. It’s like viewing the deep roots of a great oak tree for a fleeting instant.

Haynes gives Dylan’s emergence into popular culture via the New York City folk scene of the early 1960s faux-documentary treatment. Friends, including a Joan Baez-esque Julianne Moore reminisce about groundbreaking folk singer Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) from his protest beginnings to his disenchantment and subsequent reclusion.

Bale’s shy and spiritual Dylan is convincing, but his poor lip-synching is comically distracting.

Ben Whishaw plays real-life 19th century French novelist Arthur Rimbaud, a sort of historical muse/alter-ego for Dylan, much in the same role Oscar Wilde played for the protagonists of “Velvet Goldmine.”

Ironically, Haynes uses Rimbaud as an outlet for Dylan’s own words and thoughts delivered in a series of bizarre interviews in 1965. The strangely reflexive nature of the sequence provides abstract precedent for Dylan’s own philosophy so pervasive in his music.

Easily the most entertaining portrayal is Jude (Cate Blanchett) who chronicles Dylan’s notorious turn to electric in the mid-’60s. Visually a dead-ringer for Dylan’s gaunt and skinny frame perpetually in shades, Blanchett delivers the film’s signature performance. In keeping with Franklin’s chapter, Blanchett’s Dylan is far less a man than a bewildered adolescent in his father’s shoes, wandering through a kaleidoscopic swingin’ London battling dilemmas of personal character and professional style.

Blanchett’s portrayal of Dylan’s fan-alienating identity crisis is the most heavy-handed of the film. At one point, an assumedly intoxicated Jude in the company of beat poet Allen Ginsburg exclaims to a statue of Christ on the cross, “Do your early stuff!”

In a film comprised almost solely of metaphors, this segment is a uniquely literal glimpse. Heath Ledger plays a “Blood on the Tracks” Dylan as an actor famous for his portrayal of former folk singer Jack Rollins. While not as stylistically driven as the other chapters, Ledger details an event uniquely Dylan’s own, the collapse of his marriage to Sara Lownds. It is a deeply personal and conventional look at Dylan’s life, but seems remarkably ordinary among the more ambitious portrayals.

The present-day Dylan played by Richard Gere is an aging Billy the Kid living in a kind of reclusive anonymity threatened by a rapidly modernizing world. Gere’s Dylan maintains a kind of stoic dignity as he humbly dodges his own legend at every turn. Yet his outspoken defense for an antiquated western town excitedly suggests some kick left in his repertoire.

The Legend
The most unique, but potentially most frustrating aspect of the film is that it doesn’t always attempt to link the phases together in causal relation. The editing bears a semblance of chronology, but for the most part the film drifts in and out of the ages of Dylan as freely as the wind shifts. The result views like the recollected memories of an old man.

Events are constantly reinterpreted and contextualized against both past and present simultaneously, sometimes linked by the faintest of bonds. It’s a very enthralling kind of anti-Copperfieldian narration. However, it could easily be incredibly confusing for those without prerequisite knowledge of his life.

Growing up with baby boomer parents, Dylan hung over my childhood like a celestial deity. By the time my father took us to see him in Duluth, Minn., the man could hardly fill his own shoes.

“That guy changed popular music? Really? He can’t even sing…” But, alas, what I know now and didn’t know then is that my father’s Dylan was not mine, and never will be. Dylan means so many different things to so many people. The film’s mission to fully capture the broader, abstract concept of an icon and his art, rather than simply his story, was almost certainly doomed by its incredible ambition.

Though wondrously entertaining, in the end, Dylan’s presence feels as intangible as when it began. If anything, Haynes proves that no matter how close you come to replicating the tracks of giants, in reality, they’re not there.

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