Availability: Still showing widely in theaters. Streaming is set for February 25 on Prime Video, AppleTV and other platforms; on Blu-ray April 1. See JustWatch here for future full streaming and purchase options.
Will the real Bob Dylan please….
To many fans, Bob Dylan is a complete known. The challenge for director Barry Mangold and actor Timothée Chalamet was to create a film that would offer more than a cover band sound and make something fresh of the familiar Dylan story: college dropout sheds Jewish identity, arrives in Greenwich Village at 19, makes it big. Mangold and Chalamet take this icon, whose face, music—his entire persona—are known to the world, and fashion a narrative, and a character, that not only holds our interest, but makes one pause to think about Dylan as a person. For this accomplishment, the film was nominated for 8 Oscars.
Timothée Chalamet as the
19 year-old Bob Dylan arriving
in Greenwich Village in 1961.
Like a good teaser, Mangold withholds any famous Dylan songs for a good 10 minutes. The singer we hear over the opening credits is Woody Guthrie with his “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Yuh.” We follow Dylan through the streets of New York City, and then New Jersey, as the camera finds Woody (Scoot McNairy) in a hospital bed, suffering from Huntington’s disease, a friend in a chair beside him. Dylan has met his idol, and has brought him a song, one that will be on his debut album. As Chalamet sings “Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song” and holds one of the notes longer than one expects, you know he’ll make you forget he’s Chalamet, that he’s nailed Dylan—or, more precisely, Dylan with a dash of Chalamet. Chalamet is Dylan not through impersonation, but by making us believe that the character is Dylan and making us appreciate the songs, even though—or because—they are not exact covers.
Dylan has met his idol—Woodie Guthrie—and has brought him a song.
The title, “A Complete Unknown,” is, of course, a line from Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” as well as a reflection of one of the musician’s principal characteristics: his desire to find himself, no, rather to transform himself, while remaining authentically Bob Dylan. In an early scene, he ditches a planned trip to MOMA to see Picasso’s Guernica (“Picasso’s over-rated”) and with girlfriend Sylvie ducks into a showing of 1942’s “Now, Voyager,” which features a transformation of the main character, played by Bette Davis. Sylvie says the character finds herself. Dylan reacts, “She didn’t find herself, like her ‘self’ was a missing shoe. She just made herself into something different.” Sylvie: “Something better.” Bob: “Different.”
The face of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), back left, full of perhaps
too much admiration for the young Dylan (Chalamet).
The man in the chair next to Guthrie’s hospital bed is Pete Seeger, by the 1960s a nationally known folk singer. Shots of the McCarthy Era trials and Seeger’s involvement as a defendant (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” is among his many songs with a political or social message) demonstrate the banjo-playing musician’s importance in the folk and protest movements. Seeger was also an organizer of the Newport (RI) Folk Festival, with a group that included Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz), the great archivist of American folk songs. Mangold’s narrative uses this group, and several of Dylan’s recording sessions, to track the growing tension between the folk music “purists,” like Seeger and Lomax, and Dylan.
Seeger (Edward Norton) wants to keep the young musician in a folk music straitjacket.
Seeger (Edward Norton combines authority and charm) is Dylan’s early and influential supporter. He also wants to keep the young musician in a folk music straitjacket. One of the film’s best scenes, of an episode of Seeger’s TV series, has the host dealing with a fictional blues singer (played by Big Bill Morganfield, son of Muddy Waters) who drinks and uses salacious language on set. Dylan, also on the program, delights in drinking and playing with the blues singer. Although Seeger picks up his banjo, he’s clearly uncomfortable with the less pristine aspects of authentic “folk.” One of the film’s worst scenes displays Seeger’s excessive zeal in proselytizing for folk music. The older musician spins a tortuous metaphor about a teeter-totter and teaspoons of sand, which is as silly as it sounds, not to mention interminable.
Dylan laments: “Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should all fuck off."
After a fundraising cocktail party, where Dylan is the sought-after invited guest who must perform for Manhattan elites, Dylan laments: “Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should all fuck off, let me be.” He’s asked, “How do you sing?” Dylan responds: “I put myself in another place. But I’m a stranger there.” He may be a complete unknown, even to himself.
Dylan (Chalamet) goes electric, supposedly to mixed reviews at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Mangold’s script, co-written with Jay Cocks, is based on musician and journalist Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. The last quarter of the film is set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, focused on Dylan’s decision that fateful night to cast off the restrictions of Seeger and Lomax and go all in on his electric guitar, backed by a raucous band. As portrayed in the film, Lomax and Seeger, especially, are so appalled by their hand-picked successor’s loud and electric sound that they literally try to pull the plug on him, and Seeger considers using an axe to cut the power cables, restrained only by his wife, Toshi. That may not be an accurate version of events, which 2 Film Critics doesn’t insist on—this is not a documentary. It’s worth noting the events of that night are still debated. See Bruce Jackson’s contrary account in his 2022 book The Story is True. Jackson was there in the thick of it, and has the audio tapes to make his case. Whatever the truth, the film’s version illustrates Dylan breaking free of the folk constraints, and, once again, transforming himself.
Joan Baez is mainly in the picture to moon over Dylan,
as Monica Barbaro portrays her here.
“A Complete Unknown” is burdened by the caricatured way in which two key women are presented, as well as by the over-the-top idolization of Dylan and his music by the women, Seeger, and others. The character of Joan Baez is especially disturbing. Monica Barbaro has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for an interpretation that is simply off. Baez was a significant musician, thinker, and by the late 1960s a writer in her own right; her voice was beautiful, with an edge. You’d never know any of that from this performance. Baez is mainly in the picture to moon over Dylan, and in some ways to be his Greek chorus, as in this exchange: Bob: “Sunsets and seagulls. Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist’s office.” Joan: “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.” Bob: “I guess.”
Another "mooner" is Dylan's first girlfriend, Sylvie (Elle Fanning),
who tears up and runs away on seeing Dylan and Baez perform a duet.
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We see too many doe-eyed, weepy closeups of Elle Fanning, who plays Sylvie, one of Dylan’s early girlfriends, similarly in Dylan’s thrall. (Suze Rotolo, on whom Sylvie is based, appears on the 1963 album cover “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”) There’s no person there, just idolatry. Even Norton puts on that adoration face for his Seeger.
All of this idolizing is fine to a point; it affirms that Dylan is a rising star and is becoming a phenomenon. But it eviscerates the characters engaged in the idolatry. One doesn’t necessarily look for adherence to the truth in a biopic, but treating Baez this way crosses a line. It also makes the film less interesting.
Against these weaknesses, the film offers compensatory strengths: Chalamet’s complex, compelling performance; the part-supporter/part-villain character of Pete Seeger; the many (too many, some would say) Dylan songs; the focus on Dylan’s transformative character; and the frenzied finale at the 1965 festival. A thoroughly enjoyable two hours and twenty minutes.
She says: I was kind of dragged into seeing this movie, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
He says: I thought Chalamet was too cute to play Dylan. Maybe he isn’t all that cute. Or maybe Dylan was cuter than I remembered.
Date: 2024
Director: Barry Mangold
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro, Elle Fanning, Scoot McNairy, Norbert Leo Butz, Big Bill Morganfield
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 141 minutes
Oscar Nominations: 8: Best Motion Picture, Director (Mangold), Actor (Chalamet), Supporting Actor (Norton), Supporting Actress (Barbaro), Adapted Screenplay (Mangold, Cocks), Sound, Costume Design
Other Awards: 19 wins and 118 other nominations
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