We ask a lot of our artists. They should be creatively free and spurned when they “sell out.” They should be authentic, but not when the authenticity curdles into self-indulgence. They should never repeat themselves but also never change, do exactly what we expect but also surprise us, and create timeless art that’s also current and relevant.
Those tensions drive A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as the supposedly inscrutable Bob Dylan as he rises through the New York folk scene into his public break from the movement’s brahmins when he “went electric.” By the film’s end, this Dylan is entirely knowable: He’s a musician who wants to do what he wants, all while being one of the most talented artists of the 20th century. And like all great artists, he resists the boxes and strictures of others, especially those who would be the supposed protectors of his authenticity and creativity.
That resistance bears some impressive fruit. There is something so cathartic when, as the film’s third act begins, a frustrated Al Kooper (the songwriter and producer played by an appropriately youthful Charlie Tahan) dashes from the control room into the studio at Columbia Records. Any Dylanologist worth his weight in bootlegs knows what’s about to happen, but that doesn’t diminish the dramatic release of the moment when Kooper gets behind the Hammond organ just in time for the rest of Dylan’s band to kick into “Like a Rolling Stone.” The organ’s soulful riffs are like a weighted blanket, ensconcing you in the comfort of one of the greatest rock songs of all time.
Director James Mangold layers these sheets on top of the audience in the form of images, moments, and, of course, the songs—oh, all the songs!—that make up the Dylan legend. There’s Woody Guthrie in the hospital! They’re shooting the cover photo for Freewheelin’! It’s the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bobby’s singing “Masters of War” in Greenwich Village!
Superficially, Mangold’s film follows the musician biopic playbook. But there are a few reasons why A Complete Unknown avoids the genre’s standard pitfalls.
The acting is superb, from Chalamet’s uncanny embodiment of Dylan to Elle Fanning’s remarkable emotional work as Sylvie (a renamed Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s on-and-off girlfriend during the early 1960s) to Edward Norton’s phenomenal turn as folk singer and activist Pete Seeger. Norton in particular shines in how understated he plays Seeger, a surrogate father for Dylan who subtly conveys his shifting views of his protégé. Seeger’s only false note, which is hardly Norton’s fault, is a late apocryphal scene involving amplifier cords and an axe.
The film is helped by sticking to a discrete time period—starting with Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 and ending with his legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival—rather than attempting to cover a cradle-to-grave scope. The external timestamps to orient viewers to the historical setting, such as Kennedy’s assassination or a mention of the Beatles, are minimal and unobtrusive.
And several of the dozens of Dylan songs in the movie are performed by Chalamet in full, elevating them from mere memory cues to crucial moments of plot or character development. Listing the highlights when every song shines would be futile, but the handful of duets between Chalamet and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez are truly sublime. There’s a tantalizingly brief hint of “Girl From the North Country” in its infancy, thankfully followed by more complete treatment. There’s plenty of artistic license with how Bobby picked up the siren whistle (in truth, it was the drummer who brought it to the studio), but the payoff when it’s used to kick off “Highway 61 Revisited” makes it worth it. Whether you prefer folk-singer Dylan or rock-star Dylan, the soundtrack is a treat.
Yet A Complete Unknown mostly succeeds because Mangold, who co-wrote the script with Jay Cocks, sees the real story of Bob Dylan’s electric turn. It wasn’t about a popular singer selling out or a wayward young kid falling victim to the temptations of stardom, and Mangold admirably resists depicting his move away from folk as a corruption.
Dylan’s pure folk era, which lasted about two-and-a-half years after his arrival to New York in 1961, is a fine demonstration of his talent. His performances of folk standards are raw and arresting, and skeptics should give his eponymous debut record a listen. But it’s his original compositions that reveal the genius, starting with his “Song to Woody,” which the film uses to introduce us to Chalamet’s entrancing portrayal as well as to Dylan’s virtuosity as a songwriter.
But Chalamet also captures the restlessness Dylan had with “protest music” and the limiting strictures of folk. Yes, he could spin masterpieces with just a guitar, a harmonica, and his, um, idiosyncratic voice, but Dylan had both greater ambitions and a wider musical interest.
A pair of scenes lets us see another side to Bob Dylan. The first is early at a party at Bobby’s apartment, when Baez discovers on a desk evidence that this mysterious troubadour had a Midwestern upbringing, a typical ‘50s kid who even played in a few rock’n’roll bands. Later, once Dylan’s folk stardom is established, he surreptitiously follows session guitarist Bob Neuwirth (who would later become Dylan’s road manager) into a New York bar to enjoy Neuwirth’s band deliver a rollicking rendition of an Irish folk song that, needless to say, rocks harder than “Blowin’ In the Wind.” The metaphor becomes almost too obvious when Dylan is recognized by the bar patrons and has to beat a hasty retreat. As long as he’s a protest-music icon, he can’t rock!
The film’s title is cribbed from the chorus of “Like a Rolling Stone,” but it aptly sums up the Dylan legend. In the film, he is unknown to the characters who love him, support him, admire him, envy him, resent him. He is unknown to his audience, whether they are the folkies at Gerdes in the West Village hearing him for the first time or the crowd at Newport in 1965 who aren’t sure what to think of his brief, angry, electric set. He is unknown to Seeger, who pours into young Bobby all of his hopes for a folk-driven social-justice revolution but watches it slip through his fingers. Dylan’s artistic ambitions outstrip Seeger’s political project.
And we music fans are all the better for it. While A Complete Unknown works on the most surface level as an early Dylan jukebox movie, it ends just as the genius is really beginning to get to work. What follows is Blonde on Blonde, his recordings with the Band, his country turn with Nashville Skyline, his collaborations with a post-Beatles George Harrison, Blood on the Tracks and Desire, his temporary conversion to evangelical Christianity, his 1980s career downturn, his tour with Tom Petty and involvement with the Traveling Wilburys, his 30th anniversary concert, his return to form with Time Out of Mind, his Nobel Prize for Literature, and so much more.
It’s remarkable how much happens in the Dylan story after the end of the film, and little of it was what listeners and fans were necessarily demanding from Mr. Robert Zimmerman. Thank goodness.
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