By MAX ASHBURN
Observer Staff

One of my favorite Web finds of the past few weeks is this compilation of the top 10 most incomprehensible Bob Dylan interviews of all time put together by “New York Magazine.” The clips cover three decades of Dylan giving his trademark incoherent, rambling answers to reporters’ questions.

As disjointed as Dylan comes off in the clips, they offer a clearer sense of the man than the new biopic, “I’m Not There.” The film is, ostensibly, an examination of Dylan’s life and career told through six different actors of varying ethnicity, age and gender with each character representing a different point in the singer’s history.

Alarmingly, it’s Australian actress Cate Blanchett that comes closest to looking and sounding like Dylan, a dead ringer for the singer in his early 20s.

Bob Dylan - 1997 Reuters File Photo

Most of the events depicted in the film are based on actual events from Dylan’s life. For instance, his famous 1965 Newport Folk Festival appearance is recast as the New England Music Festival, although the series of events is the same. Blanchett takes the stage with an electric guitar and a loud backing band and is booed by fans while a soundman attempts to cut power to the stage.

In another scene, we see Dylan rolling around on the ground with four mop-tops we’re led to believe are the Beatles. In real life, it was well known that Dylan introduced the Beatles to psychedelic drugs and had a big influence on their songwriting in the mid-’60s.

These factually-grounded scenes are interspersed with bizarre montages; spiders crawling across the screen, a young and British-sounding Dylan answering questions as if in an interrogation chair, giraffes appearing out of nowhere and other such nonsense. The decision to switch back and forth from color to black and white seems purely arbitrary.

Perhaps the most puzzling embodiment of Dylan is that of Richard Gere, whose appearance as a scraggly cowboy is supposed to be a reference to the 1973 film “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,” which Dylan acted in and wrote original music for. His dog runs off, he rides his horse into town and he starts a near-riot at the town gazebo. And that’s it.

Director Todd Haynes (”Far From Heaven,” “Velvet Goldmine”) has created a tedious and unnecessarily abstract mess of a film, more incoherent than the man himself. The pretentious snoozefest drags on for well over two hours, reason enough to avoid it like any Dylan album from the 1980s.

It is possible for a film to be bizarre and non-sequential and not fall apart. Witness “Donnie Darko,” “Primer” or the 2004 masterpiece “I Heart Huckabees.” But while watching “I’m Not There,” I couldn’t help but imagine Dylan sitting behind me and leaning forward to whisper in my ear, “Hey man, maybe you’re in the movie and I’m eating the popcorn!”