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That Perkins Rowe has everything, yo. Even a shiny new movie theater.

I finally saw I'm Not There at Canal Place in New Orleans last weekend. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan, and this film is certainly a trip. With six actors portraying the legend, it's like listening to "Desolation Row," "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" all at the same time. Cate Blanchett will get an Oscar nod, and depending on the Academy's mood, just might win the thing. Newcomer Marcus Carl Franklin was excellent as the young "Woody" version of Bob Dylan, a wiz kid troubadour riding rails and writing blues and protest songs beyond his years. I could go on for pages about what I liked about the film. It's a thrill ride through the 1960s and '70s with a soundtrack filled with hidden Dylan gems -- Jim James' mournful "Goin' to Acapulco" stands out -- but instead I'll mention my quibbles.

Unfortunately Christian Bale was underutilized as both "Jack Rollins" the torch song scribe, and "Pastor John," the evangelical gospel singer. Writer/director Todd Haynes misuses Dylan's real-life rant against ageism and classism at an elite awards banquet as some cheapened political statement. Even more glaringly obvious, Haynes has no clue what to do with Dylan's conversion to Christianity. Haynes understandably fails to address it on a spiritual level, but he also completely overlooks the impact it had on his fan base. If Dylan going electric was, as Haynes portrays it, like Bobby's band mowing down folk fans with machine guns, going Christian was like him riding an A-bomb Slim Pickins-style right down into the heart of every existential shopper who by the late 1970s still falsely viewed Dylan as either their counter-culture standard barer or an above-it-all posterboy for aging cynical hipsters. And yet, all we see is a benign, if sincere, version of "Pressing On" to a small rec room congregation?

While the muse of I'm Not There is Dylan's various ever-shifting personas, Haynes also wiffs on a huge opportunity to delve into the exact toll these metamorphases had on the man. Heath Ledger's version goes through the divorce, but there is no indication that any mythic duality caused the familial rift -- only a huge Hollywood ego. The fact is the real Dylan's first electrified set, blasting "Maggie's Farm" in the face of "change is gonna come" folkies was followed not by a sly smirking from Dylan. No, after a chorus of boos, he returned to the stage with his acoustic guitar and gave them what they wanted: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." According to witnesses he finished the song with tears in his eyes. Maybe he realized he had traded an audience for enemies, and for a moment, even briefly, he regretted it. But Haynes drops this scene all together.

After being called "Judas!" in England later that year, the real Dylan turned to his band and said "Play f****** loud!" before kicking into possibly the greatest performance of "Like a Rolling Stone" ever. The irony is that eight minutes later, the audience that had booed him before was caught in rapturous applause. But Haynes ends this scene without that defiant, converting rendition of "Like a Rolling Stone." Instead Haynes' Dylan steps meekly behind the closing curtain, a court jester mesmerized by the blinding spectacle. I'm Not There gets a lot right, but overall Haynes' Dylan -- save for Franklin, and possibly Richard Gere -- is too distant, too removed from emotion, context and condition. The real Dylan was more affected by his surroundings, his collaborators, conspirators and combatants. And of course the inverse is also true. Dylan was there. And in every way conceivable, he still is.