
I’m Not There. 2007. USA. Directed by Todd Haynes. Screenplay by Haynes, Oren Moverman. With Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin. 35mm. 135 min.
Todd Haynes’s fractured anti-biopic of Bob Dylan was a casting director’s dream. His longtime collaborator Laura Rosenthal envisioned six different actors—Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, and Marcus Carl Franklin—embodying various, contradictory aspects of Dylan’s public persona: poet and outlaw, born-again Christian and huckster. “The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan,” Haynes observed, “he’s no longer where he was. He’s like a flame: If you try to hold him in your hand you’ll surely get burned.”