Like A Complete Unknown

"So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh." Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy)

Those of us alive in early '60's could not have known the nasal, raspy-voiced 19-year-old, Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet), would one day change folk music forever. Director James Mangold in the biopic A Complete Unknown, perfectly captures the times changing and Dylan as he takes us from Pete Seeger's traditional folk to Dylan's own brand of folk rock.

The surprise in this solid one-of-the-best of the year, is how much music Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks give the audience. Besides, several of the tunes are played in full by the lead actors, not something I could say even in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody. Another surprise, Chalamet can sing very well.

Inevitably, a folk star must contend with the attentions of women, either friends or colleagues. The latter are represented in the distractingly attractive Joan Baez (Monia Barbaro), both talented and beautiful. Her biopic, I Am a Noise, explained her ambivalence toward Dylan, who was her opposite with his growing selfish mien.

Lover Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), not as talented or beautiful as Baez, represents the collateral damage from his fame. Despite his growing disaffection, she still influenced him to write such classics as A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and The Times They are A Changin.

Both women are treated as important parts of Dylan's life, not just weepy or ineffectually forlorn. Baez was never neutralized by his allure, whereas Sylvie shriveled. The film captures this rough spot in his life while it also champions his talent. Let's face it-he was distant, downright enigmatic, and the film doesn't try to explain why. But then, other attempts at understanding him such as Scorsese's No Direction Home and Haynes' I'm Not There failed as well. Dylan's just too interior to be flushed out.

What these and other parts of his life also show is Dylan's insensitivity while he could sing of more loving attitudes to mankind in general. It is commonly known that artists can be abrasive and dismissive but also creative beyond measure. Dylan, however, clashes with the warm and caring Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, waiting I predict for an Oscar nomination) over Dylan's electrifying folk music, one of the intriguing conflicts the film does not sugarcoat.

Besides the splendid period accuracy, A Complete Unknown offers multiple musical sequences to delight even the newest audiences. After seeing this bountiful biopic, audiences witness Dylan becoming better known and his music eternal for even the most conservative audience.

One of the best films of the year and a biopic for the ages.

In the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," Director/Co-Writer James Mangold ignores many of the conventions associated with this genre, tropes he treated more respectfully in "Walk the Line" and "Ford v. Ferrari." Mangold's non-traditional approach gives him the flexibility to effectively address his decidedly non-traditional subject.

This film is a fascinating mix of fact, outright fabrication, fantasy and supposition. It's a chaotic mixture endorsed by Dylan, who has had his own on-again/off-again relationship with the truth. Dylan once said, "Truth was the last thing on my mind, and even if there was such a thing, I didn't want it in my house." This film is stronger because of the liberties it takes. It mashes together characters and events. It jumbles events with no regard for chronological order. It's as comfortable including events that "might have happened" or "should have happened" as it is faithfully retelling events that are well-documented. It's all in keeping with Dylan's penchant for "self-mythologizing."

"A Complete Unknown" explores the period from 1961-1965, when Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) moves to NYC from Minnesota, meets Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), becomes part of the folk scene in Greenwich Village, encounters Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and has a relationship with Sylvie (Elle Fanning), an artist/activist whose beliefs motivate him to perform at the 1963 March on Washington and to pen "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This period culminates with Dylan and his band performing with electric, not acoustic, instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, a controversial event many heralded as the bridge between traditional folk and rock music. Along the way, we see how he deals with his sudden fame, a development as unwanted as it was unexpected.

What distinguishes this film is the acting. All the performers do their own singing. Chalamet is outstanding as Dylan. He does a reasonable depiction of Dylan on stage, but that's the least impressive part of his performance. An eggplant could impersonate Dylan because of his unique singing style. What makes Chalamet's performance so noteworthy is his ability to portray a man who is distant, aloof, driven, uncaring, enigmatic and determinedly self-absorbed - embracing all those negative traits while exuding a charisma that keeps the moviegoer fixated, despite his character being unlikeable in so many ways.

Edward Norton is excellent as stolid, workmanlike singer and banjo player Pete Seeger. Norton's performance demands that we acknowledge Seeger's sense of fundamental decency. Boyd Holbrook has too few appearances as Dylan pen pal and friend Johnny Cash. In the film, Cash encourages Dylan's rebellious instincts, telling him to "go track some mud on somebody's carpet. Make some noise, big D." But the most impressive performance is by Monica Barbaro (the female pilot in 2022's "Top Gun: Maverick) as Joan Baez. With no formal training as a singer or musician, Barbaro prepared for a year for this role. Here, she shows off her strong, clear soprano while portraying a singer whose voice has been described as "incomparable."

The content included in (and omitted from) "A Complete Unknown" is sure to inspire debate and disagreement. I'm confident Director Mangold and the subject of the film wouldn't have it any other way.

Even if you've heard the songs ten-thousand times, one of the many remarkable things about "A Complete Unknown" is remembering - or reliving - the sensation of hearing them for the first time.

People who tear up just watching the trailer for this Bob Dylan biopic will know what I'm talking about.

People who don't - including a couple of generations who weren't around yet - have a lot to learn from writer-director James Mangold's magnificent retelling of Dylan's early years. They span his 1961 arrival in Greenwich Village and pilgrimage to the bedside of dying Woody Guthrie, to the Newport Folk Festival where he upended the folk music world he had championed by going electric in 1965.

The movie features incredible Golden Globe-nominated performances - more like feats of channeling - by Timothée Chalamet as Dylan and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, along with Monica Barbaro doing a wonderful Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as long-suffering girlfriend Sylvia Russo.

But the film's real "star" is the music, rather than the prickly personality of this honky tonk American demigod destined to win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, and to still be performing on his endless tour well into his 80s.

With all the stars doing their own singing, "A Complete Unknown" is a chills-up-the-spine musical treasure chest, overflowing with dozens of the greatest songs ever written. Viewers of my generation will thrill witnessing the moment of creation of songs that changed history, over and over. Not only are the songs born anew, but still images - album cover photos in particular, stared at for years - come to life before our eyes.

Backgrounds, too - Greenwich Village, Manhattan apartments, recording studios and penthouses; outdoor folk festivals from Newport to Monterey - shine, seemingly in the light generated by the idealism of that brief American moment. Filmmaker Mangold's beautiful film pulses with energy amid all the impeccably observed period details.

Burning with ambition when he arrived in New York, 19-year-old Bobby Dylan had a new name and fanciful stories of traveling with carney shows instead of true accounts of his upbringing as Robert Zimmerman in Hibbing, Minnesota. A slave of his music, he was hardly ready when the fame he had sought descended on him overnight.

His genius and intuition were once-in-a-generation gifts. His psyche and temperament were made of flimsier stuff ... even though he was almost as good at wisecracking as he was at writing songs.

"You know, you're kind of an asshole," Joan Baez tells him shortly after they get together.

That doesn't stop them from making beautiful music together, amidst all the other exhilarating performances on screen.

The tension between Dylan's almighty gift and his his very human difficulties handling it make "A Complete Unknown" unlike other music biopics. Fans know lots of the details already. Every time Bob climbs on his Triumph, we know where he's heading.

Time has always been Dylan's "thing." He's a physicist as much as a poet in understanding the nature of change. The songs he wrote in the film's time frame were astounding for summing up everything, from romantic love to geopolitics, in words everyone knew were true the first time we heard them. It was Dylan, rather than our teachers in school, who educated us.

Sixty years later, at the other end of the timeline, his lyrics are just as just as immediate, just as profound, just as funny.

Bob Dylan was, and is, the voice of our culture in our time.

There's no way this movie can't be an homage and tribute, but it doesn't glorify.

Instead, it's more honest ... more interesting ... more ambiguous ... For all the books, PhD dissertations and decades of efforts to know the man behind the voice, Bob Dylan remains as elusive and enigmatic as ever. There's no "answer" to what, or who, he is.

He just is.

"A Complete Unknown" is just a new way of connecting some of the dots, resulting in a wonderfully alive film experience, a musical thrill show, a return to our youth.

When it opens in theaters Christmas Day, I imagine I won't have been the only one sitting through the final credits just to hear the songs one more time.

I do like a music based film, and I'm old enough to know and like Bob. I think Timothy is good, but previously so young looking I struggled with some of his roles. Here he grows up. Bob Dylan is a great part for him, and he plays him well, maturing physically and as an actor.

The film seemed a little "clean" and in the midst of the mid 60's onward, drugs seem to be limited to cigarettes! Even Bob himself has talked about drugs issues related to opioids and psychedelics, so it did seem an important admission, maybe related to Bob still being with us.

However still an entertaining biopic with great music which was the focus (as it should bet) for the Nobel prize winning icon.

Driving home from the cinema happily singing along to Bob which clearly had the desired effect. 7/10.

I was expecting a lot from this film and in some cases it delivered. The acting is great across the board with Chalamet portraying Dylan brilliantly and his singing is really on point.

The problem with the film is that the story reads like a greatest hits rather than a biopic. It's like the writers and director wanted to fit as many songs in as possible and forgot they were meant to be telling a story at the same time.

It's not a bad film in any way, I just was expecting it to be better than average. With the quality of acting and singing in the film it really deserved better story telling to go with it.