Ledger was better

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I must agree with Neohacker. I felt Bale didn't put his whole into this role and could have done better. I also thought Blanchett's take on Dylan was outstanding! She WAS Dylan!! I also think that any female can play male or any male can play female. It all depends on how good the actors is. I thought Blanchett was really good when she was getting interviewed by that English man "You don't know me man!" . And he was good when she sang Mr.Jones. The other person I liked was Heath Ledger (R.I.P) he was very good as the family man and I really believed him as a character.

"I've never seen Bale seem so amateur...it came off as a cheap imitation "

Did it occur to you that Bale was portraying the "fake" Dylan; "Bob Dylan, the Myth"? I understood EXACTLY what kind of Dylan Bale was portraying. You had to be a Dylan fan of the period to get it. Rock stars look like rock stars, or at least, people bigger than their hype. Bale was the "power" image of Dylan. A Dylan that look good, seemed enigmatic, a "pseudo-tortured" James Dean type. The post-folk, now rock star. Bale was portraying the Dylan that the fans (post-folk) thought they saw. He was using the known cliches at the time to mimic Dylan, NOT genuinely capture Dylan. I don't see how Bale could have changed his acting technique to be more like Dylan yet seem less real. Probably the directorial/actor mistake was not sticking in scenes with Bale deliberately distorting himself to the audience. Then you'd understand that Bale was portraying the Dylan that didn't exist, it was what Dylan looked like to us. (And paradoxically, that was partly what Bob Dylan was...)

You'd then think Blanchette was "trying" to accurately portray Dylan. No, she was trying to portray Dylan's psyche at the time, the actual tortured artist. The Dylan who had recently broke away from his folk following, but discovering he STILL couldn't get away from the typecasting *beep* The media was now trying to wedge him into the rock star or artist simulacrum. After all, how can you fake looking like the person you want to fake, when that person doesn't look at all like what the general audience thinks they're seeing? (It hasn't been done yet.) Its especially hard when "Mr. Jones" is too dense and cynical to buy any of it, or anything outside of his own narrow minded universe. Blanchette looked like Dylan, she delivered the lines like Dylan, but one should have felt how surreal Dylan's life was like at that period. The metaphor of his life at that time was Dylan trying to be recognized as his "true" self (in the movie, a woman), yet the rest of the audience was only seeing a portrayal of Bob Dylan, the man.

Ledger portrays the Dylan you don't see as a fan. Ledger is Dylan's "real life" psyche at that time, the artist, up to the post-breakup of his marriage (at which point Ledger/Dylan ceases to exist). What do you see? An actor with rockstar buzz, who never really meets his artistic goals, and his real friends know it. A guy who has to live disappointed with his failure to meet his unattainable expectations, and how it eventually erodes his marriage.

(The black kid was the Dylan before he found his voice. He was a white jew pretending to be a victimized black boy, railing against social injustice in the modus of his hero, Woody Guthrie. Don't ask me what the hell Gere was supposed to represent. Dylan, the broken man in hiding, post-marriage? Perhaps the short period when Dylan was running with The Band? Don't take that as a criticism of Gere either. You can only work with what the script gives you.)

Come to think of it, I was kind of unimpressed with the movie (too art film pretentious) until I had to write this exposition, originally only to defend Bale's performance. Wow, this was a movie with good performances. Too bad the film's critical flaw was that it was impossible to appreciate without knowing Dylan's life beforehand, in thorough detail.

Cate owned the movie, enough said. She didnt ACT, she WAS Jude Quinn. Its a scandal she didnt won that darn Oscar.

After her i think the kid was best and then Richard Gere. All the other ones were more or less ok.

but he's dead. (Too soon?)

Last Films Seen: Little Children {B+}

No I agree with you. She did over act a bit in the film, but I think that was the whole idea of her portion of the film. That whole segment was very over the top. That's what made it so interesting.
But at the same time, they would get very serious for her portions every once in a while. It was a very well done dynamic.