Writer-director Todd Haynes, who directed and co-wrote (with Oren Moverman) I'm Not There, a multipart biographical essay on Bob Dylan, must have spent endless hours pondering, "If I were a singer-songwriter "man of parts" like Dylan, who would I get to play me?"

Haynes - who once told the story of Karen Carpenter with Barbie dolls, and made a clever copy of a '50s movie with his "Far From Heaven" - has created an interesting psycho-cultural-biographical mix. With this Dylan-esque montage, he's managed to make the film look and feel like the artsy '60s while honoring its subject.

bushy-haired Blanchett that gives a mind-blowing, Oscar-worthy performance

But the entire meaning of the film is left up to the audience, the same way a Dylan song falls on all ears differently. What he has created is not one but a collection of performers who represent different phases of Dylan's life.

Six different ‘aspects’ of Bob are embodied by seven different actors, from the young Marcus Carl Franklin (black and 11-years-old) as a Woody Guthrie-obsessed youngster, to the inspired Cate Blanchett as the folk-to-electric wired Dylan, to Richard Gere as a surreal Billy the Kid incarnation.

Intertwined with these are Christian Bale, twice, first in the early '60s as an emerging protest singer and later as a gospel artist in the late '70s; Heath Ledger appears as an actor who once played Dylan and Ben Whishaw as a '60s era Dylan apparently being interrogated by authorities. Yet, none of them is truly playing a character named Bob Dylan. It's almost a faux biography.

It's the bushy-haired androgynous Blanchett that gives a mind-blowing, Oscar-worthy performance as a defiant, wired-on-amphetamines Dylan, called Quinn, who riffs and fidgets through interviews, hell-bent on shedding his old identity.

The film doesn't set out to be a documentary, but rather an impressionistic look at a singular life, told through interlocking scenes where Dylan is represented. It's a lot to take in, and it definitely helps if you're a Dylan fan. Some of the songs are sung by the man himself, while others are covered by a number of artists including Mason Jennings, Calexico and Eddie Vedder. "It's like you've got yesterday, today and tomorrow in the same room," says Gere, playing a Billy the Kid type character. Which is a good summation of the film.