Charlotte Gainsbourg as Claire (right) with director Todd Haynes on the set of I'm Not There Jonathan Wenk/Courtesy of TWC 2007

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WATCH THE TRAILER

In an alley behind Montreal's Musee des Beaux Arts, Christian Bale leans against a wall that's plastered with artfully distressed music posters; he's posing for a mock album cover. Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg sit on a low wall across the street, smoking cigarettes. Julianne Moore emerges from a minivan balancing a plateful of salad; she's just had a wig fitting, and sports the hair — long, straight, brown, middle-parted — of mid-1960's Joan Baez.

Though all the actors are shooting the same film — I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes (Safe, Far From Heaven) — it's appropriate that they're intensely engaged in separate pursuits. I'm Not There is nominally the story of Bob Dylan's rise to and rejection of fame, but it's a rarified, fractured biopic: Some of the events depicted come from Dylan's life, while others are metaphorical; six different actors play aspects of his character, and none of them are called Bob.

Newcomer Marcus Carl Franklin plays Woody, the youngest Dylan persona, who invents himself by way of emulating Woody Guthrie. Ben Whishaw is Arthur, a teenage poet. Christian Bale is Jack, a folksinger who later turns Pentecostal Christian. Moore plays Alice, a fellow folksinger that Jack loves and abandons. Heath Ledger is Robbie, a movie actor who personifies Jack. He's married to Claire (Gainsbourg), a French painter who is a version of Sara Lownds, Dylan's first wife (from 1965 to 1977) and the mother of four of his children, including the singer Jakob Dylan. Cate Blanchett plays Jude, the character who most resembles Dylan, and whose story most literally parallels his, as he trades folk music for electric and resists being vilified and deified in equal measure. Finally, Richard Gere is Billy, an aging outlaw who escapes to find peace in pastoral anonymity.

"It's comforting knowing how detached we are [from a literal biography], and free because of that," says Ledger, whose costume this afternoon is a green turtleneck and a corduroy suit so tan and wide-waled it looks like corrugated cardboard. "In conventional biopics, no matter how hard you try or how good the performances are, you're always defaming that person. You're always taking a little bit away from them and not giving them anything. So I think this film is attempting to honor Dylan in some way, as opposed to capture him."

Shooting resumes inside the museum, which is standing in for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for some scenes, and Paris' Louvre for others. (Making the film in Quebec, Canada kept the budget under $20 million.) Haynes, who resembles a boyish Mark Hamill, sits in a high director's chair, chatting animatedly with Ledger, who sits in a much lower chair, long legs bent so that his knees are level with his shoulders. "This was the hardest location to secure," Haynes says. "We had to pull every string, use every connection. We finally got the okay after Heath posed for a photo with the museum director."