It’s a rainy, gloomy Friday afternoon in Staten Island, but Gregg Breinberg refuses to let the conditions dampen his enthusiasm. Inside the PS 22 school auditorium, 70 fifth-graders are rehearsing choral arrangements with Breinberg, their musical director, affectionately referred to by all as “Mr. B.”

One of the predicaments that producers face when translating Asian horror movies into English is our profound lack of, like, spirituality. In Eastern culture ghosts are accepted, feared and revered.

In an interview with the London Guardian in 2004, while filming in the city, Woody Allen said of his recent spate of films, “If I keep working, I think it’s possible that I could do a great film by accident.”

Haynes is no ordinary filmmaker, and I’m Not There is no ordinary biopic. Tricky, powerful, sometimes ridiculous, it eludes definition. Haynes cast both a black eleven-year-old boy and an Australian woman as Dylan. On, paper it sounds ridiculous, but on film, strangely, it works—sometimes.