Rating:
Summary: A well-executed biography about Bob Dylan, the star, not Bob Dylan the person, but the real star is the musical performance
Some biographies try to cover a person's entire life, from birth to the present (or death) in two and bit hours and it becomes a game of join the dots - all the major events are covered, but that leaves little time to get to know the subject. Some biographies focus on a single major event in the life of the subject so we get more time to get to know the person. "A Complete Unknown" does both and neither, and surprisingly, it works.
Part one of "A Complete Unknown" can probably be titled "How Dylan Became a Star" and it covers all of the dots, all of his greatest hits. The rest of the film follows the events that led to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Dylan ditched traditional folk in favour of electric and rock, to the dismay of the Folk community that had revered him. Despite the focus on such a singular event, we never really get to know Dylan the person.
Fear not. This is not some fatal flaw with the screenplay by James Mangold and Jay Cocks, or the film's direction at the hand of the former, but it is very much an intentional choice in storytelling. Throughout the film, even those closest to Dylan, including his girlfriend Sylvie Russo (played superbly by Elle Fanning, in a role based on Dylan’s then actual partner, Suze Rotolo), his mentor Pete Seeger (in an excellent transformation by Edward Norton), nor his one-time collaborator and lover Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro, a standout even in this extremely competent cast), really do get to know the real Dylan. And you begin to suspect at one point maybe even the man himself isn't so sure who he was, who he is, and who he wants to be (if there ever was a difference between the three).
In a remarkable performance by Timothée Chalamet, he channels but never imitates Dylan at his enigmatic best. This continues even down to Chalamet's unexpected vocal talents, as he not only sings, but sings live many of Dylan's greatest hits. Monica Barbaro's Joan Baez, similarly, offers a splendid musical performance. Ditto Edward Norton's Pete Seeger. This is quite a feat to pull off, but it was also a necessary one, since this movie is, to paraphrase Mangold, it pretty much all music, where the songs are the drama. In a way, it's almost like a concert film, and it was hard during my watch to resist singing along and the instinct to clap and cheer at the end of every number, as if I had been transported to The Village circa the early 1960s.
The stellar performances plus captivating musical performances join the masterful direction and solid technicals, such as the amazing set designs that really transport you to that time period. If the film has a flaw, then it has as much to do with its enigmatic subject matter as anything the filmmaker did or didn't do. It's hard to feel a real connection to Chalamet's Dylan because we never really get to know the real Dylan, because, in real life, nobody really knows the real Dylan. Here we see him as the newcomer, the phenomenon, the rebel - always present and larger than life, but never intimate enough to really understand the man. He remains a complete unknown.
"A Complete Unknown" is in cinemas on 23 January 2025. Streaming release date: TBA
