A Complete Unknown

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (15)

D: James Mangold

Searchlight / Veritas / White Water / Range Media Partners / The Picture Company / Turnpike (Fred Berger, Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Peter Jaysen, James Mangold, Alex Heineman,Jeff Rosen & Timothee Chalamet)

US 🇺🇸 2024

141 mins

Biopic/Drama/Musical

W: Jay Cocks & James Mangold [based on the book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties” by Elijah Wald]

DP: Phedon Papamichael

Ed: Andrew Buckland & Scott Morris

PD: François Audouy

Cos: Arianne Phillips

Timothee Chalamet (Bob Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger), Elle Fanning (Sylvie Russo), Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash), Dan Fogler (Albert Grossman)

A biopic of Bob Dylan, tackling the years of his life from his arrival into New York in the 1960s to his controversial headlining of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

The film plays fast and loose with the facts, as many films inspired by real events do, but even Bob Dylan himself, contributing to the production as an advisor, submitted material that was completely fabricated, resulting in a portrayal of the singer-songwriter by Timothee Chalamet as a complete enigma. Surly, entitled, brilliant.

Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Bob Dylan as a singer, but as a songwriter and lyricist, I think he’s right up there with the best of the best, constantly evolving his sound as the times changed & including social messages within his lyrics, as demonstrated with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, as just one example.

Following his arrival in New York City, Dylan meets Pete Seeger, plays the folk music scene of Greenwich Village, has a tempestuous relationship with both Sylvie Russo (a fictionalised version of a real person) and Joan Baez, releases his first album (of folk covers), before having greater commercial success with his follow-up albums, particularly due to the reception received from “Blowin’ in the Wind”, which Joan Baez also covered to much success. I think it’s quite fair to say that the first two acts of the film are a bit of hodgepodge, cherry-picking various events from Dylan’s life as a greatest hits compendium, and it’s only really the third act that had a strong narrative structure, as he prepares to headline the 1965 Newport Folk Festival  with his new electric sound, considered a huge controversy at the time by the Folk Music purists who believed the genre should strictly be all acoustic.

Timothee Chalamet certainly looks the part as the music legend, and does a very good job impersonating his sound with his own singing, but I think this is far from an accurate portrayal of Bob Dylan. Edward Norton & Monica Barbaro deliver great supporting performances as Pete Seeger & Joan Baez respectively, and the rest of the cast are fine.  The script has some witty dialogue in places, but on the whole this is more of a jukebox musical than it is a biopic of one of the 20th Century’s most influential people. Personally, I’d have preferred the film if it were a little shorter and didn’t stray too far from the facts.  The final act makes it all worth a watch though.

7/10