Great movie for Bob Dylan fans.

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2008)

I am only a few years younger than Bob Dylan. I was a person of the 60s and immersed in the 1960s music scene. But I was not a fad listener, I liked what I liked, and made no apologies. I liked some of the Beatles, but not everything they did. I liked a little of what Dylan did, but overall I was not a fan of Bob Dylan's recordings. I don't even consider him a singer, but more of a musical poet. Until I read his biography this morning, I didn't even know if he was still alive.
This movie borrows its title from one of Dylan's compositions, the last stanza being:
"Of course I'll not deceive her I'm not there, I'm gone It's all about confusion and I cry for her"
The ambiguity of these lyrics mirror the ambiguity of Bob Dylan's life. He was born and raised as a Jew, but later proclaimed to be a born-again Christian. He wrote politically-charged songs but until currently refused to endorse any politician. The Dylan of the 60s was different from the Dylan of the 70s, and so on through the years.
For these reasons this movie was done with several different actors playing fictional characters with different names as the Dylan surrogates, reasoning that since the real Dylan is continually changing, one actor could not play him over his career.
The movie works, and my favorite was Cate Blanchette as one of the Dylans. I am still not a Dylan fan, so I enjoyed the movie at only one level, the movie-making technique. But for Dylan fans I would term this a "must see".