There were no empty seats for the press screening of I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan flick. The impressionistic biographical ode is dazzling on the surface, but in the end positing seven different Dylans, represented by six different actors, doesn’t result in much fresh insight into the man or his music. You might say Haynes takes his title too literally, in an unintentionally obfuscating way.

It’s hard to apprehend different Dylan personas because there’s not much that separates them except the actors and certain chronological realities. There’s Dylan the folk singer of the late 1950s and early 1960s (Marcus Carl Franklin); Dylan the Greenwich Village activist (Christian Bale); Dylan the symbolist poet (Ben Whishaw); Dylan the partying rock star of the mid-‘60s (Cate Blanchett); Dylan the bad husband (Heath Ledger); Dylan the outlaw actor and composer of hippie Westerns during the late 1960s and early 1970s (Richard Gere); and Dylan the born-again Christian (Bale again).

Although more than a gimmick, the concept minimizes and diffuses Dylan’s long act of self-creation. Trying to communicate multiple sides of the man with one actor might have been a more fruitful challenge.

A more cynical (and wrong-headed) response is to conclude the movie doesn’t have much to say because there isn’t much to say. Naturally, Haynes believes there is a lot “there” there. He began his press conference by emphasizing the movie was made with Dylan’s blessing and that he was given creative carte blanche. His goal was to say something “comprehensive and complex” about Dylan, and he doesn’t bother with nuances or marginalia. He’s aiming for the soul, and no one can deny he totally immersed himself in Dylan’s life and work, plunging in and absorbing all he could.

Unfortunately, too much stayed in his head or not enough trickles down to the audience. Maybe Haynes had too much freedom. If Dylan had imposed some restrictions by withholding certain rights or if had Haynes narrowed his focus and tried to be more idiosyncratic, the movie might have been great, or at least seemed weightier and more probative. It turns out to be a stylistic exercise in using different cinematic languages to examine an idolized figure. It’s closer to Far From Heaven than Haynes’ breakthrough short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, in which he used Barbie dolls to chronicle the singer’s demise from anorexia.

NYFF also screened the concert movie The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965, in which director Murray Lerner had a very precise and modest goal—namely, to capture the moment when Dylan turned from folk to rock and a new musical sensibility. During Lerner’s Q&A with press, a gentleman raised his hand and complimented Lerner for destroying one Dylan myth by providing evidence that the infamous booing triggered by his electronic version of “Tambourine Man” at the 1965 festival—the documentary’s climax—was far from universal. This fellow said he was in the crowd that night and reported that many in attendance—himself included—were applauding and cheering Dylan. The soundtrack confirms his account.

Yet this man was missing the bigger picture. The idea that hardcore folkies—who look downright square and conservative throughout the movie—protested Dylan’s musical evolution, his urge to grow and move on with times, creates fascinating cognitive dissonance. It also makes the point of Haynes’ movie more cogently than Haynes does. It’s always been hard to pin down Dylan or pigeonhole his admirers and detractors. As far as that insight goes, I’m Not There and The Other Side of the Mirror are both wildly successful.