I'm Not There

I saw this Bob Dylan movie on Saturday night and can't stop thinking about it. I basically agreed to see it because of Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, but ended up loving every minute.
Bob Dylan is portrayed by six different characters each that, in theory, are based off of different characteristics/time periods of Dylan's life. In the array of Bob Dylan's that we see, we have an ADORABLE little boy (played by Marcus Carl Franklin), a variety of hot middle age Bob Dylans (played by aforementioned actors), an older Billy the Kid character (played by Richard Gere), and the somewhat older Bob Dylan played by Cate Blanchett.
Two things I want to discuss. First, Cate was incredible. At first, it was a little tough for me to get over that it was here playing Bob Dylan. To some degree I think this is the issue I have with any big name actor in a movie - I'm always going to think of them as the tabloid personality before the character. When I saw Jennifer Aniston in "The Break Up", I looked for the Jennifer Aniston i read about in US Weekly as well as Rachel from friends. When I saw Vince Vaughn in "Fred Claus", I delighted to see the Vince Vaughn from "Old School" and "Wedding Crashers." But once I was willing to suspend disbelief, I saw that she was simply incredible at this part. The hard sell wasn't that it was a woman playing a man, just Cate Blanchett; Her incredible acting made it easier to believe. The wardrobe choices, loose yet tailored suits, helped to create the silhouette of a man. Her mannerisms, although somewhat effeminate, seemed totally appropriate.
Second, multiple characters playing one person. Although many people will likely discuss this in their much more well thought out and written reviews, I think this movie makes an interesting discussion point for philosophical studies of the complexity of identity. I understand that Todd Haynes justifies this by saying that Dylan was a complex person who constantly reinvented himself. Am I the only one was under the belief that we are all complex people? We all reinvent ourselves with new time periods, significant events, insignificant meetings, etc. I don't meant to belittle the effect this had on his depiction of Dylan. Instead, I mean this to say, why don't we use this more often? This should become the new film thing just like film montages and the real time format (a la "24").