Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
A Complete Unknown
Director, James Mangold
Screenplay, James Mangold and Jay Cocks
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
A Complete Unknown, the new biopic about Bob Dylan takes its title from the refrain to his “Like a Rolling Stone”
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone
The song articulates his ambivalence about success and failure, about the loss of innocence and the realities of the music world.
The film is based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! written by Elijah Wald, and follows Dylan from his early folk music success through to the his controversial use of electrically amplified instrumentation at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival
We first encounter Dylan Timothée Chalamet in 1961 when he moves from Minnesota to New York City, to see the recently hospitalized Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) where he also meets Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) who becomes a close friend
Dylan impresses both the singers with a song he has written for Guthrie and he ends up staying with Seeger’s family who introduce him to the New York folk music scene.
Dylan meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), his first girl friend at a concert, charming her with his approach to music and life while she introduces him to politics and the Civil Rights movement The two begin a relationship and move in together.
At an open mic session Dylan follows on from a performance by Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) starting a relationship which would last many years. Also at the session is Albert Grossman who signs Dylan up and becomes his manager. However, the record company won’t use any of Dylan’s original work, only interested in covers. The poor sales and reception are the first of the singer’s frustrations with the music industry
Dylan’s career takes off and he goes to several of the folk music festivals including Newport where he sings with Joan Baez and where in 1965 he alienates many of the crowd as well as his fellow folk musicians for embracing the more dynamic and challenging rock sounds that the electric guitar offers.
Timothée Chalamet isn’t going to convince a Dylan purist but he comes close to capturing the playing, the raspy voice, the subtle gestures and movements along with his ambivalent and unpredictable reactions to people and events.
We get a sense of how his musical ideas developed, mixing personal, political and musical elements to create songs which look at the heart of American society. All his encounters and relationships become the grist to his creative mind as he become one of the great voices of his generation
The film is full of his music as well as the music and musicians who had an impact on the singer – street musicians, The Kinks, Johny Cash, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There are also glimpses of important events of the time which shaped his view of the world – The Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the death of J. F. Kennedy.
Throughout the film we see the differences between Dylan’s style and many of the other musicians of the time. In his duo “All Day and All of the Night” with Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival Baez’s sweet singing contrasts with Dylan’s sharper, more cynical sound, a sound which sets him apart for the next fifty years.
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