Film

Kaleidoscopic, grandly tuneful and decidedly not your average biopic (perhaps not a biopic at all), Haynes’s Bob Dylan movie is the imaginative feat of the year. An untethered leap into celebrity deconstruction, the film is bound to enrage purists who expect one of those fawning “essential moments” narratives; yes, Dylan does go electric at Newport in 1965, but “he” is actually a she (the perverse Blanchett), and that isn’t a guitar in her grip but a machine gun, strafing the crowd. Still with me?

If there’s a director at work today to trust with your musical legacy—as Dylan has—it’s Haynes, who dives into his pop stars like the journalist from Velvet Goldmine and consistently arrives at the tender truth of self-reinvention. (Were Richard Carpenter to really watch Haynes’s Barbie-doll “Superstar,” he’d see it as empathetic toward Karen and him both.) Much has already been made of Haynes’s casting of six different actors to play Dylan, each providing a different shade of ego. But the takeaway here is less slippery chameleon than tribute to an artist’s fecundity: If you’re seeking blues credibility, why not see yourself as a wandering black troubadour child (the amazing Marcus Carl Franklin) instead of a Minnesotan Jew?

Still, is any flavor of Dylan particularly relevant today? This is the sneaky brilliance of I’m Not There; as its visual fabric shifts from shiny Fellini-esque popscapes to Cambodian bombings and dissembling Presidents, you feel the rush of our current sick-making sociopolitical climate. Dylan somehow made it through, but at what cost? Essential viewing.