"I'm not There" captures Dylan through a prism

Feature biographies of musicians turn up with regularity, like "Ray" and "Walk the Line," but I've never seen anything remotely like Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan portrait "I'm Not There" — it's as if Haynes, the talented creator of "Safe" and "Far from Heaven," took film-biography convention, ran it through a Xerox machine, and made kaleidoscopes out of the pieces. The film is bracingly original; it's also mystifying, overlong and at times nearly incoherent. Floating at a distance from its audience, it creates its own smoky logic.

"Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan" are the words we see on the screening at the film's beginning — and then the kaleidoscope turns. Six different actors play Dylan, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that they play different aspects of Dylan. Marcus Carl Franklin plays Woody, a black teenager obsessed with the music of Woody Guthrie. Ben Whishaw, in a floppy blow tie, plays Arthur, a '60s musician inspired by the 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Richard Gere is Billy, a figure in a surreal '70s-looking Western.

Christian Bale is Jack, a folk singer caught up in the political movements of the '60s. His story is presented as a faux documentary (at times uncomfortably close to Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind"), with fellow folk musicians weighing in on his influence. (Julianne Moore, a Haynes regular, turns up as singer Alice Fabian.) Heath Ledger is Robbie, an actor and father on the verge of breaking up with his artist wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg). And the most talked-about version of Dylan is indeed the most striking: Cate Blanchett, whisper-thin and filmed in shades of gray, is Jude, a rebel '60s pop singer with a mop of frizzy hair and a jittery, squinty energy.

None of these characters interact with each other; they exist in different times and places, with Haynes and co-writer Oren Moverman slicing and mixing the stories so they fit together like verses of a strange yet haunting song. Shot by cinematographer Edward Lachman, who created "Far from Heaven's" autumn-toned bouquets of color, "I'm Not There" is a mixture of visual styles as well; two of the stories (Jude and Arthur) are filmed in crisp black and white, and the color sequences are often breathtaking. Woody, having hopped a train, watches miles of fields go by in an impossibly yellow-bright green. In the Robbie story, Ledger and Gainsbourg hop on a motorcycle in a perfect blue moment of twilight; it's as if they've created a magical world, just for an instant.

Those not already familiar with Dylan's work may leave here with Haynes' images in their head, rather than Dylan's tunes. ("I'm Not There" includes many Dylan recordings, as well as a number of covers from contemporary artists.) One image in particular remains with me, long after the music has faded: Blanchett, as Jude, floats in a cloud-gray sky, tethered by one ankle high above a circus tent. It seems a fitting illustration for "I'm Not There": a breezy, imaginative attempt to hold down an artist and find his essence, before he blows away.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com