“A Complete Unknown” Review
Timothée Chalamet stars in “A Complete Unknown” as Bob Dylan as he rises to fame in the early 1960s. The film represents the accumulation of five years of work Chalamet put into portraying the musicians.
Right out of the gate, I was probably far more invested in “A Complete Unknown” than the average filmgoer. Not only because I am a massive fan of Bob Dylan, even seeing him twice in concert, but because I do feel this sense of connection to the man. We both came from Midwestern families and a working class only to move to New York in pursuit of the arts and to “catch a spark” from the greats that came before us. Since my arrival in New York, I have fallen in with an insanely talented group of artists that are keeping the bohemia of Greenwich Village alive with our songs, poems, films and writing. I have walked the same streets as a freewheelin’ Bob Dylan many a time and have found myself living a scaled-back, 21st century version of his experiences as a scrappy up-and-comer in The Village.
When “A Complete Unknown” was being filmed in New York, I snuck onto the set as they were filming at the Chelsea Hotel on a cold March night. I was not interested in seeing Timothée Chalamet or James Mangold, merely wanting a taste of how a film of this budget operates when filming in one of the most chaotic places on planet Earth. I stood there in freezing temperatures for several hours, all for a shot that is in the final cut of the film for less than 30 seconds.
Having, at last, gotten to see “A Complete Unknown” in a limited IMAX screening one week before the film’s wide premiere, it’s a safe assumption that there were few films of 2024 that had this much anticipation and this much scrutiny in my eyes. However, as both a lover of cinema and a tremendous fan of Bob Dylan, I can say with certainty that “A Complete Unknown” has the goods and makes for a compelling portrait of one of the most significant figures of 20th and 21st century popular culture. While it may not have some of the deep dives into Dylan’s psyche and mystique that fans might have hoped for, it’s still an excellent film that does look through the icon and focuses on the man underneath it all.
Set between 1961 and 1965, “A Complete Unknown” is the biographical equivalent of a superhero origin story as the film depicts the formative years of Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet). After his move to New York to visit his ailing idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), Dylan becomes friends with Guthrie’s protegé Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and enamoured with both the folk music scene of Greenwich Village as well as two women, activist Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and singer/songwriter Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), who provided reality and clarity to his world of half truths and fabricated tales of working at carnivals as a teenager. As Dylan becomes a massive star and a hero amongst folkies, he finds himself suffocated by fame and his personal relationships, leading to him making the bold choice of shaking up his musical repertoire with electric instruments and a now revolutionary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
With the amount of fame Bob Dylan has achieved combined with his notoriously elusive nature, making this film could not have been easy. Because of his talents and sensibilities, Bob Dylan has become a vibrant mirror with everyone looking at it and seeing something completely different. On top of all that, he has been extensively covered and depicted in numerous films like the documentary “No Direction Home”, which has a very similar timeline to “A Complete Unknown”, and the ambitious arthouse biopic “I’m Not There” which remains one of my favorite films. But with the amount of talent working on this film, I think that director James Mangold and company really brought this film home.
Having spent five years preparing for this role, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood Labor Strikes postponing filming, Timothée Chalamet proves yet again why he’s one of the most important actors of his generation. Despite a recognizable face and many an iconic performance, Chalamet really embodies the spirit of Bob Dylan with a portrayal that contains multitudes. He depicts the wide-eyed and jubilant early years with such an enthusiasm alongside the more tired and restless spirit that began to emerge when Dylan “went electric”, all of which is carried through in Dylan’s more reserved manner. Even as someone who listens to Bob Dylan religiously, I found it hard to tell the difference between Chalemet’s vocals and Dylan’s original tracks despite having the knowledge that every single song from this film was sung live by the actors on set with no pre-recorded tracks being used during filming.
From his walk to his talk, Timothée Chalamet follows in the footsteps of greats like Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger by taking the many facets of such a man and being able to distill it down to a wonderful performance while never losing the quality of the subject. Despite many great deliveries from a vivid script by James Mangold and Jay Cocks (Cocks’ first script since “Silence”), Chalamet is at his best when he sings much like the real soft-spoken and all-too direct Dylan. Ask Dylan for an answer and he’ll give you more questions. Ask Dylan for a song and he’ll give you the answers. Mangold and company understand this well and there are many scenes where, what could be conveyed with many lines of dialogue, interactions are stripped down to the performance of a song which is more than enough.
“A Complete Unknown” lets the music do the talking and it results in many moments that had me purely captivated. Within the first ten minutes, Bob meets his idol Woody Guthrie as he lays sick and slowly dying of Huntington’s Disease and plays him a song. What follows made me surrender to the film because I felt so safe knowing that Mangold has a great understanding of the responsibility he has been charged with.
Dripping with atmosphere, “A Complete Unknown” is able to bring the world of 1960s folk revival in New York City to life.
Alongside Bob, the film depicts a slew of players who all influenced him in one way or another with people like Bobby Neuwirth (Will Harrison), Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) and Tom Wilson (Eric Berryman) all having strong moments in the film. The big standout is undoubtedly Edward Norton as Pete Seeger who very much represents the folk establishment that is breaking through into the mainstream but still needs a big push to get the same kind of commercial attention as Little Richard and Buddy Holly. His nurturing presence with Dylan is comforting and you feel the sense of passion he has for bringing folks together but you can feel that Dylan’s eventual turn towards more popular music is going to cause friction.
Despite hardly saying a word, Scoot McNairy is superb as the great Woody Guthrie and the connection that sparks between Woody and Bob was one of the strongest emotional centers of the film. If Bob is a disciple of Pete Seeger and other folk leaders, then Woody is God and the way these two interact, you’d swear that Bob Dylan was playing his guitar to a burning bush instead of a hospital bed. Boyd Holbrook also commands great charisma with his performance as Johnny Cash and you especially gravitate towards the enthusiasm he has for great artists like Bob Dylan. As any artist will tell you, support is one of the most important things that can be given and to see someone like Johnny Cash providing that to Bob Dylan is sure to elate many a fan of country music and rock-and-roll, especially if your introducton to Cash and his music was Mangold’s 2004 biopic “Walk The Line”.
Through strong production design and more old-fashioned sensibilities on behalf of cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, “A Complete Unknown” is excellent at sucking the viewer into the world of New York during this time of great musical expression. Through the gigs at places like The Gaslight Café, Café Wha? and Gerde’s Folk City, Dylan not only gets to perform for folks with our peering eyes taking it by the handful, but it’s also setting up the rules of the folk tradition. It’s an atmosphere bent on respect for the old ways to the point where it can stifle innovation whether it’s Dylan’s first record having to consist mainly of covers or the organizers at the Newport Folk Festival not wanting to entertain Bob playing with members of Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band. But the film also never villainizes this scene, merely depicting it as the battle of viewpoints that it was. It’s a scene that has given Bob so much but he also must eventually defy it to pursue greatness.
Despite being made with reverence, I appreciated that “A Complete Unknown” doesn’t buy into the prophet/messiah/voice-of-the-people title that has often been thrown Bob’s way, especially during the time period the film depicts. Of course the film is going to show how Bob was a great songwriter and how adored he was by his friends and the public but it isn’t afraid to show his negative tendencies. This is especially evident in his emotional distance when it involves the two women in his life: Sylvie Russo and Joan Baez.
As Joan Baez, Monica Barbaro delivers a beautiful voice for Joan’s performances while also marvelously depicting this complex relationship. Barbaro’s chemistry with Chalamet is intriguing because you understand the draw that she, as a fellow artist, would have to someone like Dylan but she also can see through his fabricated past. Bob and Joan’s partnership, both musically and romantically, has always been murky and the performances and direction really shine a light on how they were while putting famous performances in a whole new context.
Elle Fanning also brings a great deal of sensitivity and, God forbid, normalcy to the story as one of the few people in Bob’s life who doesn't want anything from him aside from love. This could have been one of those typical performances of a sick-in-the-mud who feels alienated because of their partner’s rising success but Fanning really does well at showing a deeper side of things. Sylvie’s not only afraid of being left behind in Bob’s whirlwind but is worried about the effects that this rapid fame is going to have on him for good and for bad. In particular, the last third of the film really shows the strengths of Fanning’s performance and makes us question why we find ourselves intrigued by a man who is talented and likable in many ways but who is also capable of hurting people so.
Sylvie may be a fictional character but much of the experiences this character has are based on Bob’s long-time girlfriend from the early 60s: Suze Rotolo. Yet Bob asked for Mangold and Jay Cocks to change her name. Was this out of guilt for the way things went down between them or out of a sense of protection since Rotolo sadly passed away in 2011. I don’t think it was for the sake of Bob’s own ego since he doesn’t really seem to give a damn about what others think. Regardless of the name change, the relationships Bob has with both Joan and Sylvie in the film do add dimension to the film as whole, removing any sense of flawlessness with Bob both as a person and an artist.
While I enjoy seeing recreations of my favorite Dylan moments as much as the next guy, we as an audience aren’t just seeing carbon-copies of widely available footage. What is being depicted is a greater context behind many of the great moments of Dylan’s life whether they were on a stage or in a small room with three other people. However, I think I personally could have used more of the Village scene which Dylan was a part of. Yes, we do get a sense of how Dylan’s folk music was being looked at from a national lens but what about how it was being looked at by folks like Dave Van Ronk, Maria Muldaur and Liam Clancy? As good as it is to see Dylan working in the studio and seeing the quick evolution of his music within a few years, I think it would have done good to see him doing more of those early busking jobs to gain the confidence of his fellow folkies.
Granted, I must concede to the fact that I’m a superfan of Bob Dylan and many of the details that I personally would have liked to have seen were just not in the cards for a film that is already pushing it with a two-hour-and-twenty-minute runtime. In fact, I was astonished at how well the film moved with incredible pacing by editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since Buckland won an Academy Award for his amazing work coediting Mangold’s 2019 sports biopic “Ford v Ferrari”. “A Complete Unknown” presents a thoughtful look at one of the most iconic faces of the last century that does demystify its protagonist while still keeping some of the mystery alive for the viewer. Because, let’s be honest, anyone who wants to truly and completely remove all sense of enigma from Bob Dylan is setting themselves up for failure. Most films centered on Dylan understand this and “A Complete Unknown” joins their ranks.
I can see fans of Dylan being a bit more divisive about this film but when have we agreed on anything? There are still fans, if you can call them that, that still think of Dylan as a pariah who turned his back on the pure folk tradition. Bob Dylan fans can either be the most intelligent and cool people on the planet or can present themselves as preening, pretentious arthouse rejects who often find themselves stepping on the throat of the man they revere. It’s a bizarre case of “either, or”. But while “A Complete Unknown” might spark debate about how much or how little the film should have told the world about its subject, I can see this film being a wondrous gateway to people who have either never heard of Dylan or only know a few songs or albums. If this is a person’s introduction to Bob Dylan and the treasure trove of music, writing and art then this is a great way to entrance people. As a Greenwich refugee, a folkie, a poet, an artist, a fan, a cinephile and a man just looking for entertainment, “A Complete Unknown” is an exciting shot of electricity that keeps moving itself and the audience to the next great plane. Like a rolling stone.
