"Trumbo" is one part straight documentary and one part "I'm Not There."

Like Todd Haynes's 2007 meditation on Bob Dylan, in which several actors (and one actress) portrayed aspects of the singer, Peter Askin's compelling documentary about blacklisted screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo employs an array of actors (and one actress, Joan Allen) to render Trumbo -- who was censured, jailed and ultimately barred from work as a result of the House Un-American Activities Committee's anti-communist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s -- from a variety of angles.

Based on the stage play of the same name by Trumbo's son Christopher, the movie takes Trumbo's words, mainly from letters he wrote during his ordeal, and puts them into the mouths of others. Brian Dennehy reveals Trumbo's gruff side; Josh Lucas, his romantic nature. In an extended passage about masturbation, Nathan Lane uncovers the writer's self-conscious libido, while Paul Giamatti, reading from funny letters Trumbo wrote to the phone company, and from a Seussian poem dedicated to Christopher, embodies Trumbo's sense of humor, which could be both stinging and sweet.

All this is intercut with interviews with the writer's contemporaries and the standard archival footage.

What becomes clear is that Trumbo's humor is only one thing that helped him survive the professional and personal hardships of the blacklist, which drove more than one of his Hollywood friends to kill themselves and took a toll on Trumbo's children. But the emotion that's laid barest here is outrage, as the writer of such acclaimed films as "Spartacus" recalls the shame mixed with pride he felt when he couldn't accept his own Oscar for "The Brave One," having written it pseudonymously.

That's the real reason so many actors are shown reciting Trumbo's words. They don't just stand for a side of the writer. They also stand for all of us, for whom one man's loss of freedom is a collective injury.

-- Michael O'Sullivan (Aug. 22, 2008)

Contains a single vulgarity and lengthy, sex-related commentary.