Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, his extraordinarily complex semi-biopic “inspired by the many lives of Bob Dylan” is a vision as mercurial as the man himself. To try to explain it is to take away from it – much like Dylan, it defies genres, classifications or other clumsy attempts to pigeon-hole it. Here, Todd Haynes recalls how this vision – eight reflections of Dylan played by eight different actors including a woman and an eleven year old black kid, in stories which sometimes connect and other times don’t – came to him as he drove across America from New York to his home town of Portland, Oregon. As he did he listened exclusively to Bob Dylan – reconnecting the music he loved as a teenager but had left behind for many years as he grew up, moved cities and directed his films Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and Far From Heaven.

As to the eternal question of if Dylan is a bonafide genius or a supreme charlatan, Haynes says: “I don’t think he’s a charlatan. I think there’s a charlatanism at the root of all creative endeavours. It’s inherently a lie – something we create from nothing, from outside ourselves, and becomes a surrogate for ourselves, for our emotions for what we’re going through at the time. Something that we have every right to relinquish and run from and reject, and not feel that we’re continually being defined by it. Because we – everybody – changes.” A statement succinctly sums up the enduring appeal of Dylan’s chameleon nature.

It’s clear from your films that you are a huge fan of music. What did rock and roll mean to you growing up?

Oh, it meant everything. I mean, it continues you. For young people, it’s often the thing that gets them through their lives and helps them establish a sense of themselves, a sense of rebellion, a sense of autonomy. I think a feeling of possibility in the world, that I definitely felt in music and very specifically Dylan’s music.

Did this sprawling, interweaving concept of a vision come to you all at once? Or was it knocking around in your mind for a long time before you were able to put it on paper?

The concept of the multiple characters really did come fairly quickly, and it came in this environment of a fresh obsession with Dylan. A different kind of obsession – maybe one that stood out because it came to me in my mature years.

What had happened in your life at the time?

It was definitely coming out of a kind of fallow period in New York, where I was starting to feel less inspired by the city and my life there and feeling in general that all my energies had been going into my work and not my life, or my sense of home or place. And that encouraged a desire to just drive across country to Portland, Oregon where my sister lives. Just to get away. And this whole period was suddenly being kind of distracted by this desire to listen to Dylan much more intensely than I had before – or with at least a new intensity. And it exposed me to a lot of new stuff I’d never heard before. Old stuff – old, mysterious recordings and bootlegs. And then I started reading the biographies and reading interviews. And it was in this spell that this idea of the shapeshifter – this constant artistic chameleon -came to me. It wasn’t something imposed on what I was looking at – it was something I felt like I was bumping into everywhere I turned.

Did you have an image of Cate Blanchett specifically to play the female Dylan in the electric period? Because watching her, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part.

That’s because of Cate and her unbelievable, transcendent performance. It was never really out of a desire to reveal the female side of him – except in a physical sense. I was really dumbstruck by how he had transformed yet again, physically, into this strange amphibious figure on stage during the electric period. And in interviews and all the footage I saw, I saw all his eccentric gestures and hand movements, his fidgeting body where completely different to how they were in Don’t Look Back, the film earlier in the same year. Just the speed of the shedding skins, and throwing himself into new climates and commitments – he was moving so quickly. I felt like a woman playing that would bring out that strangeness. It would not be because Dylan had a new sensitivity at that time, in his writing or his outlook. If anything it was the contrary. But I found that physical manifestation really important to dramatise.

Was she pretty well familiar with Dylan and a fan before you started work on the film?

She seemed pretty familiar with Dylan, but the process of the film – and this is true of all the actors – deepened their love and knowledge of his work. For Cate it became almost a love affair – she really fell for Dylan. She was passionately extolling his virtues in many of the pre production meetings that we had, so she had that appreciation and respect. But I think just submerging herself into it brought her to a different level. Her husband Andrew was like, “you’re falling in love with the guy!” (laughs).

Where do you fall on Dylan’s constant reinvention? Do you feel it’s all genuine, or is it some kind of façade or a meeting of the two?

Everybody goes through a refuting of what they were before. And he just did it all much more so, with much more product than most creative people. The funny thing about someone who’s constantly reinventing themselves and living fully in the moment is that they’re always vulnerable to being unmasked. And there’s always that vulnerability and that sense of terror, or a childlike innocence at the thought of being betrayed by people around them. And it’s remarkable for all of us because we assume that people in the public eye can handle all that kind of stuff. But Dylan at times remarkably fragile for being so famous, for being so coveted and being constantly in the company of other people and being interviewed constantly. But I love that about him, that ability to be so strong and so fragile at the same time.

The way he depicts women in some of his songs, his regard for women – I felt these were important issues to raise in the film. And also the way that we gained consciousness as a culture between the 60s and the 70s about these issues – he right in the middle of those changes and that maturing process. Which I think he ultimately underwent like all of us. It happens in the songs, and you see everything in the songs. You see the blind spots and you see the points learning and the corrections and the reappraisals and all of those things. The kinds of claims on him and questions asked of him at certain times – I didn’t want him getting a total free pass through.

It was clear he was put in a position he didn’t want to be in yet he never resisted success either.

That’s the thing – that’s part of those fair questions. He can certainly say when he plugged in electric “oh, I was never really into the folk thing. I just did that to break into a scene.” But then you read the songs, you look at the lyrics, you listen to those performances – and they’re stunning! And you know this guy is bullshitting you. You know what I mean? That he puts so much labour, and so much thought and sensitivity into whatever he’s doing and it’s easy for him to say “I only care about what I’m doing now.” He definitely has this ability to kind of slap in your face, your interest in what he was doing yesterday.

Do you have a favourite Dylan period that you keep going back to or does it change in accordance with wherever you are in your life?

It moves around. I certainly came to this project with a special interest in the electric period, in the Blonde on Blonde time. I think that having this through each of them through the production, I feel so close to each one. They each touch a different side of you and respond to different moods and moments in all of us. What makes it hard to say what my favourite song is, it’s so impossible because there’s so many – for any different mood or emotion or phase in your life that you could ever want.