Todd Haynes new Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There comes out in a few weeks. In case you haven’t heard the schtick, Dylan’s multiple personas are played by different actors, including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett, among others.

I saw the film at the Telluride Film Festival and totally loved it. I also got a chance to have a chat with director and all-around nice guy Todd Haynes. Karina didn’t think so much of it.

I was a nominal Dylan fan in college, but the film made me fall in love with the man again. My renewed affections for Dylan were called into serious question however, when I stumbled upon the above video on the YouTube homepage. I know Dylan has been many things over the years, but corporate shill for GM? Come on!

As I thought about it more, I started to realize that maybe I missed the point of Haynes’ film…

I’m Not There is a dense piece of work, to say the least. Layers of Dylan references are stacked with a glut of stylistic homages to 60s auteur cinema. The film explores cultural shifts of several decades, personal tribulations, religion, political upheaval, all while exploiting cross-reference to a dizzying level of complexity.

That said, it’s certainly possible to miss what the film has to say about Dylan himself, which is really quite simple. Everyone surrounding the artist, from fans to spouses, fooled themselves into believing that they truly knew him. One of my favorite scenes of the film is when Dylan, at this point played by Blanchett, offends throngs of young fans by “going electric” at the Newport Folk Festival. After the concert the camera tracks past the faces of heart-broken young fans, saying things like, “I was his biggest fan, how could he do this?”

Re-watching the Cadillac ad while thinking about that scene, I’ve realized that I too fell for Dylan’s trick. Like so many characters in the film (and indeed in real life) I assumed that because I connected with his music, I could count on him to publicly voice my beliefs, in this case that music should be free from associations with particular products, especially Escalades. As a commenter on the video’s YouTube page put it, “the times they are a-changin’.”