Bob Dylan. One of the greatest songwriters of all time. A 60-year career with 40 studio albums, 21 live, and 44 compilations. Inducted into the Songwriters and Rock and Roll Hall of Fames and recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor, Pulitzer Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. How does a filmmaker even begin to contemplate condensing this influential life into a two-hour movie? Add to the fact, that your enigmatic subject is not exactly the easiest guy to get to know. Well, if you’re director James Mangold (Walk the Line, Ford v. Ferrari) you concentrate on a transformational period in music history, Dylan’s migration from Minnesota to NYC and his corresponding evolution from a folk troubadour in 1961 to going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Timothee Chamalet is not even 30 years old and has already starred in films ranging from Willy Wonka to Call Me by Your Name and Dune to Beautiful Boy. To prepare for A Complete Unknown (taken from the chorus of “Like a Rolling Stone”), he immersed himself into all things Dylan and worked with coaches on vocals, guitar, harmonica, dialect, and movement. He sings and plays instruments on all 40 Dylan songs in the film. He is mesmerizing. Ed Norton (Motherless Brooklyn) shines as Pete Seeger who is initially supportive of the popularity Dylan brings to folk music but ultimately tormented by his new direction. Boyd Holbrook (Justified: City Primeval) as Johnny Cash and Scoot McNairy (Halt and Catch Fire) as Woody Guthrie are in different stages of life, but both in awe of the new young phenom.
The two women in Dylan’s life in the early ’60s were his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, and fellow folk musician and brief lover, Joan Baez. Elle Fanning plays Sylvie Russo (Dylan didn’t want Rotolo’s real name used), immortalized on the cover of his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Both women were frustrated and captivated by Dylan. He comes and goes as he pleases consumed with songwriting and his ever-present guitar in hand. He could be uncaring and belittling, as when he tells Baez that her sunny, flowery songs “sound like an oil painting in a dentist office.” Fanning’s facial expression says it all about being involved with Dylan as she watches him and Baez perform “It Ain’t Me Babe” face-to-face.
A Complete Unknown is restrained and refreshingly linear in narrative. Instead of trying to figure out what really makes Dylan tick, Mangold lets the songs do the talking. Folk anthems, “The Times They Are-a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” are embedded in the civil rights and war protests of the time (in an early sign of restlessness Dylan emphatically declares that he won’t be singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” the rest of his life.) His small nightclub rendition of “Masters of War” while the world is on the verge of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missie Crisis is particularly chilling. It is quite jarring when Dylan and his band plug in and let it rip at the Newport Folk Festival. Also, portentous. The movie closes at it began with Woody Guthrie’s “So Long It’s Been Good to Know You:” “This dusty old dust is-a-gettin’ my home, and I got to be driftin’ along.” This captures Dylan’s spirit as well as anything could in the early ’60s…and still does today.
(A Complete Unknown opened in theaters on Christmas Day, running time 2:20)
D² Rating: ◼◼◼◼☐
Trivia: Dylan’s pickup band for the Newport Folk Festival featured which two respected musicians?
Trivia: Dylan had a career renaissance in 1997 with the release of what album?
Answers below
Answers: Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper and Time Out of Mind
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