“How does it feel? To be without a home? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone?”
I don’t know how many times I have heard that lyric and that song but never really gave it a whole lot of thought until I saw James Mangold‘s very rich story of four years in the life of a young Bob Dylan in the early 1960s. That lyric is where this anti-biopic, A Complete Unknown, gets its title, and also takes a stab at defining who Dylan (played magnificently by a note-perfect Timothée Chalamet) was as he tried to find his way after travelling from home in Minnesota to New York City in 1961. He turned up at age 19, a budding genius who didn’t know it then, but by mid-decade would make seismic changes in the music landscape while trying to figure out just who the artist as a young man really is.
Dylan was then, and still is to a less certain degree, an enigma, truly brilliant but one who took his own path in showing who is on the inside — a question you can still perhaps ask. He was catching the tail end of a folk music tradition, one especially represented for him in the form of the legendary Woody Guthrie (nicely played in his final days by Scott McNairy), who Dylan idolizes and simply wanted to meet. That is portrayed in a sequence where he visits a fading Guthrie in his hospital room in order to play him a song he had written for him. It is a striking early scene as it also signifies the passing of a creative torch, the beginning of the end of an era musically speaking, with one innovator acknowledging another, both very different but no less influential. By the end of this film and a concert at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan shocked the world by “going electric,” we will have witnessed the birth of a new legend, a gamechanger who would eventually win Oscars and Nobel Prizes and not show up to accept either.
Mangold, who directed 2005’s Walk The Line, which depicts the life and music of Johnny and June Carter Cash also at an early tipping point in their careers, returns to the musical form he seems to crave. This is not the cradle-to-grave kind of musical biopic we have seen in recent times given Freddy Mercury, Elton John and also this season with Robbie Williams in Better Man (although in that musical film, Williams is portrayed as a chimpanzee), but rather one more interested in a period where a changing world was shaping its subject, and events from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Kennedy assassination to the civil rights movement would have a profound effect on us all — and no less than on Bob Dylan himself.
Think of the songs this man wrote at that time. “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “All I Really Want To Do,” “Blowin in the Wind,” “Girl From The North Country,” “The Times They Are a Changin’.” There was also “Like a Rolling Stone,” part of Dylan’s historic Highway 61 Revisited album, and on and on. Mangold and his music supervisors brilliantly weave this music in and out on a soundtrack that never quits but thankfully doesn’t turn itself into a jukebox musical.
There is much emphasis on the man and his relationships here, notably with two key women in his life. Elle Fanning wonderfully plays his first real love, Sylvie Russo (a name standing in for the real life Suze Ruiolo, who Dylan wanted to protect in giving his blessing to the filmmakers). She is an activist, someone who had a profound effect on Dylan’s social consciousness even if he didn’t quite realize the impact. She knew him early on in his career, and as his fame started coming into focus it took a toll; Dylan wasn’t always there, a man too often lost in his music to concentrate on personal relationships. Another was with Joan Baez, played by a stunning Monica Barbaro, who had already been around the fame block ahead of Dylan, which might have attracted him, but also was deep into bringing protest and justice to her artistry in ways that he keyed into. Theirs was a complicated pairing not destined to last long. “You are kind of an asshole Bob,” Baez says after he insults her songs at one point. A Complete Unknown paints a nice contrast between the two women.
Another key relationship depicted is would-be mentor Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), the traditional balladeer who sought to take on the mantle being vacated by Guthrie, but also serving as a kind of mentor to Dylan — until he was upended. That is where this film, based somewhat on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night that Split the Sixties, is headed. That title sort of tells it all and proves to be the setting for the film’s final act, rather than the whole thing. Here was the Woodstock-style traditional folk concert that for years was a showcase for folk talent, and on this particular day in ’65 became a landmark of change, a place where Seeger felt betrayed by his friend as Dylan, for lack of a better description, plugged in electrically with his backup band. Music, at least in this genre, would never again be the same. Few things have ever literally signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a new one like this event, and it is given thrilling life in its re-creation by Mangold, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks that adds many layers of the human side of Dylan that the book did not go into with this kind of personal detail. Dylan is undeniably complex, at one point complaining about what fans want from him. “They should just let me be whatever it is they don’t want me to be,” he says.
At the center of this all is a remarkable performance by Chalamet, who performs all the songs himself in astonishing and authentic fashion. There is no lip-syncing or blending of voices between actor and subject. It is all Chalamet in the same way Walk the Line was all Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, and Coal Miner’s Daughter was all Sissy Spacek. Done the right way as it is here, it adds immeasurably to this film without turning into an imitation. Chalamet goes a long way to capture Dylan in every moment, with vocals that are jaw-dropping to behold; all the work he put into every aspect of capturing Dylan is evident. Both Fanning and Barbaro are terrific, with the latter also supplying her own vocals as Baez who simply can’t be imitated, but Barbaro gets to her essence. Norton not only eerily looks like Seeger he becomes him, even as the veteran singer is threatened eventually by what he sees Dylan representing. Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash has some brief memorable scenes as well, as do Dan Fogler and Norbert Leo Butz among those in Dylan’s life.
Technically the film is first-rate, with excellent production design from Francois Audouy, costume design by Arianne Phillips, and Phedon Papamichael’s sharp cinematography all beautifully capturing this early 60s era of New York.
The music of course is worth the price of admission, but in Mangold’s hands fortunately there is so much more to add, thus making Bob Dylan a little less than complete unknown by the time the credits roll.
Producers are Fred Berger, Mangold, Alex Heineman, Bob Bookman, Peter Jaysen, Alan Gasmer, Jeff Rosen and Chalamet.
Title: A Complete Unknown
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: December 25, 2024 (December 18 in select Imax locations)
Director: James Mangold
Screenwriters: James Mangold and Jay Cocks
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Edward Norton, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr 21 mins
English (US) ·