‘A Complete Unknown’s Most Important Scene Never Really Happened

A Complete Unknown works so well because it feels like such an unfiltered portrayal of Bob Dylan’s early career. However, as with all music biopics, some details are changed in order to make the story flow more logically and not confuse the audience by introducing too many locations and characters. This is the case for one of the most crucial scenes within A Complete Unknown, when Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) sings “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at Newport Folk Festival, which represents not only a shift in the political environment of the time but a transformation in Dylan’s persona. Within the movie, it serves as a tonal fluctuation and is vital to Dylan’s character arc. However, the scene itself never actually happened, as the song was never on any of Dylan’s setlists for the folk festival. Despite the slight adaptations for the screen, the impact of Dylan’s music and how that reaction shifted as he moved away from folk music and refused to comply with expectations is still more than covered.

‘A Complete Unknown’ Delves Into the Psychology of Bob Dylan

Of all the musical performances in A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan’s performance of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at Newport Folk Festival is the most pivotal. The moment occurs at around the halfway point of the movie and represents a vital tonal shift in Dylan’s character, where he subtly evolves from the wide-eyed wanderer who arrived with just a suitcase and a guitar into a huge superstar. At once, Dylan is able to have hundreds of people singing his song, yet at the same time, he is coming to accept that the deeper meaning behind the words is being lost to the masses. Chalamet captures this distance between how Dylan feels about his song in contrast to that audience response. You can see on his face and through the biting line delivery that he is fighting against the current.

Before the performance, Dylan announces to the crowd that the song is brand new, which causes mild apprehension. Yet, as soon as Dylan starts to sing, his undeniable natural ability to craft music is evident, and the crowd soon begins to pick up the melody. This jubilant sing-along is the movie’s best portrayal of just how captivating and influential Dylan was as a musician. However, this admiration also serves to counteract Dylan’s internal feelings, as it represents why he felt he constantly had to reinvent himself, as he saw his lyricism reduced to a jovial singalong.

Chalamet embodies Dylan, highlighting how he used music as a way to document his personal response to political change and was critical of lyrics that were merely surface level. This is evident from his conversation with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), where Dylan compares her songs to oil paintings, beautiful on the surface but without real pain or substance to them. During the performance at Newport, these complicated feelings on the purpose of his music plague Dylan, and it reminds the audience of his psychology. He wants his music to evolve with himself and the times, and he is slowly becoming disillusioned with the repetition of his songs.

‘A Complete Unknown’ Didn’t Need To Be Completely Accurate To Succeed

However, this moment at Newport is also a vital character moment for Sylvie (Elle Fanning), his first girlfriend in the movie. Their relationship is classically naive, showing all the signs of young love. This interaction at the festival is an emotional turning point for her, as she correlates the changing times Dylan is singing about with the change in Dylan himself. She has this sudden wave of emotion where she realizes nothing will ever go back to the way it was. This intense mix of fear and worry is the perfect reflection on how unstable Dylan was for others and the profound impact he had. It gives the scene so much weight and truly makes it the pinnacle of A Complete Unknown.

The movie frames a lot of its most important moments at the Newport Folk Festival throughout the years, so much so that it becomes a character in and of itself. It is constantly reiterated to the audience that the festival is a lynchpin for the folk genre and was the most important date on the calendar. However, Dylan never actually played the political hit at Newport, so the whole sequence is merely a fabrication of history. The choice to have “The Times They Are A-Changin’” played at the festival is a likely result of its heightened importance to the narrative rather than placing this scene at a seemingly random venue. In fact, many events that occurred during the movie at Newport are just dramatic exaggeration, such as Pete Seeger contemplating cutting the soundboard with an ax when Dylan is performing with his band, Johnny Cash’s performance at the 1965 festival, as well as Dylan and Baez’s duet the same year; she actually sang with Donovan. However, the biggest difference is that Sylvie/Suze didn’t attend the 1965 edition of the festival, and by 1964 she was already aware of his growing relationship with Baez. Despite these minor inaccuracies, the spirit of Bob Dylan was certainly captured throughout A Complete Unknown.