Todd Haynes' biopic about Dylan is rather like the man himself, an enigma. It is at once bold, audacious, confusing, constantly shifting, and pretentious, but in all the right places.

I have to admit that I spent the first fifteen minutes of the film quietly chuckling to myself at the seemingly deliberate tribute (or was it?) to spoof folk film A Mighty Wind, where Julianne Moore (playing Joan Baez) comments rather drably on the times which were a changin' in sixties America. Half of me felt that perhaps Haynes laboured a little too hard on setting the context. The other half tried to go with it, for the sake of posterity.

The players; Christian Bale, the late Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin and Richard Gere, all manage their own stellar performances to varying degrees of success. Not hearing the name Bob Dylan once throughout the entire duration of the film imbues it with a subtle power.

I could have done without the lingering sentiment of Marcus Carl Franklin's role as Woody Guthrie as it bordered on Fosse's Mr. Bojangles. Nevertheless, he spoke and sang the folk upon which Dylan built his own appropriated structure.

Christian Bale's Dylan was somewhat morose in his folk days, and hugely unfortunate with the eighties fake perm wig he was given for the 'Religious Bob' phase. However, this was more than compensated for by the excellent and complicated portrayal of what is best known as Bob the sexist seventies father phase, played by the late Heath Ledger. This was a complex role to play, and he did it with all the assurance of a well-seasoned boxer. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Ledger's disaffected and disempowered wife extremely well, reflecting a doomed, angry, deep love which can no longer take his absence. Ben Whishaw's portrayal of a depressed, belligerent and somewhat brooding phase in Dylan's life simply connected the dots. Richard Gere's role as Billy the Kid was to me initially the oddest bit of the film, with a gruesome strangeness which somehow stays with you. In fact, its mumbling stream of consciousness in the aptly named town of Riddle Mo is hauntingly beautiful and staggeringly apt.

The pièce de résistance is Cate Blanchett's startlingly powerful and brave interpretation of Dylan going electric, popular Dylan, thin Dylan, amphetamine Dylan. It reflects a time which for many was the most visual, the most over-heard, the most popular and the most over-analysed and famous of all. She enters the film with such force, firing a machine gun at the once adoring and now oppressive fans. Her playful interpretation of a man who refused to be pigeon-holed is at once annoying and remarkable, whilst remaining reluctantly vain and middle class.

If there is nothing else, enjoy the music, but do be wary that 'Riddle Mo' is precisely what you end up feeling when the film is over. It stays with you, confuses you, obsesses you, and most importantly it, like Dylan's music, fascinates and captures you. This film has been lovingly made and attempts to intelligently describe an artist who refuses to be defined and just let's the music do the talking.

Catherine Murrison