Kaleidoscopic portrait of Dylan challenges viewer

As a musical biopic - or any other kind of character study -Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" is audaciously original. The subject is musical lyric poet Bob Dylan, but we don't believe the name Dylan is ever mentioned in the film.

Instead, six actors play six variations of what may or may not have been facets of Dylan's life. The characters have names, none of which is either Bob or Dylan, and they have personas that hint, tease and occasionally inform. The result is an intriguing jigsaw puzzle. If the viewer can't assemble it, too bad. Director Haynes is not going to be too accommodating about it.

Featuring an amazing stunt of a performance by Cate Blanchett as Dylan at peak fame (troubled, confused and androgynous), the film runs two hours and 15 minutes.

In addition to the various genders and races of the actors, the confusion is further pushed by Haynes' choice not to present the characters in chronological order. He jumps about in time as well as in cast. If you're willing to play by his rules, this has some of the fascination of "Citizen Kane" in searching out clues to the makeup of a famous personality.

Even the famed "Three Faces of Eve" were played by one actress. You may wonder whether there is any point to casting six actors in the varied roles, but otherwise this would have been a rather bland, stereotyped film if it had played out chronologically. (Maybe like a serious version of the mockumentary "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"?)

Facts, too, are dubious and difficult to find, or verify. This is a fictional re-imagining of Bob Dylan's life beginning with the motorcycle accident in 1966 and going backward and forward through important turning points.

The cast is uniformly excellent, even if there is no effort to tie them together into one character.

Marcus Carl Franklin plays an 11-year-old black boy who calls himself Woody Guthrie, the folk legend, and hops trains singing tales of dust bowls and vagabonds. Never mind that it's the late 1950s. We know that Dylan did once want to be Woody Guthrie.

Christian Bale ("Batman Begins," "3:10 to Yuma") comes on to play the folk idol who excites Greenwich Village with his protest music, but strangely disappears to return as an evangelist. His name is Jack.

Heath Ledger plays the womanizing Robbie, who is playing Jack in a 1965 biographical movie. (This is when it really gets obtuse.) During the filming of the fictional movie, Robbie meets a French painter (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whom he marries. This segment is meant to say something about Dylan as a celebrity, as opposed to a human. Maybe?

Richard Gere comes on as Billy "The Kid," a man who has exiled himself to the fictional town of Riddle, Mo. This, maybe, has something to do with Dylan's Western role in "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" (1973), but Dylan did not play Billy the Kid in that Sam Peckinpah film. Go figure - which, of course, is what you're meant to do.

Ben Whishaw represents the youthful, rebellious, druggie poet side of the sextet.

That leaves Blanchett to deliver the showcase performance that is likely to get an Oscar nomination in the supporting category. (If she should win, she would not be the first to win for playing a member of the opposite sex. Linda Hunt won in 1984 for playing a male journalist in "The Year of Living Dangerously.")

It is Blanchett, ironically, who looks most like Dylan and has the most interesting plot development - the period when he was condemned by many fans for turning from folk music to electric rock.

Haynes uses his cast mainly to draw attention to his direction rather than to forward any real understanding of his subject. His black-and-white photography as well as his biographical approach smacks of Fellini's "8-1/2," from 1963, which is a great film to imitate if you must imitate a film.

Julianne Moore has a bit as a poetic inspiration and David Cross as a fellow poet.

The poetry and feeling of Dylan's lyrics ring true - what little of them we hear. Musically, "I'm Not There" is a frustrating group of teasers - a bit here and a snippet there.

If it suffers as either a portrait or a story, it succeeds as an intellectual debate. Dylan himself approved the film.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com