‘A Complete Unknown’ Review

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the musical biopic genre, with artists such as Elton John, Elvis and Queen serving as the subjects for mainstream Hollywood fare. The genre has existed for decades, but fizzled out around 2007 when ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’ lampooned just how repetitive and predictable these stories had become. Yet enough time has passed that the genre has been resuscitated, succumbing to the rote habits of those earlier films: they’re shameless Oscar grabs, casting an artist’s entire life story ripped from wikipedia, hitting all the familiar beats, filled with mimicry rather than genuine acting. But there’s a trust here that as predictable and trite as the movie may be, audiences will still enjoy it so long as you play the greatest hits of the artist.

So it would be understandable to approach ‘A Complete Unknown’ with skepticism, and yet this film stands apart by narrowing its focus to a very specific moment in Bob Dylan’s life: the decision to forgo the classical acoustic style of folk music in favor of electric. A conflict and drama that may seem quaint in hindsight, this film brings back with immediacy the sense of betrayal and anger within the folk community when Bob Dylan first picked up that electric guitar.

The film opens not with the music of Bob Dylan, but that of Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), two icons of the folk music movement. We first see a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) hitchhiking his way to New Jersey to visit Guthrie, now hospitalized and unable to speak due to Huntington’s disease. He meets Guthrie and Seeger and plays them a song, and they immediately see his natural songwriting and singing prowess and pour into him their own dreams for the future of folk music.

Seeger takes on Dylan as a protege, and we watch as his career inevitably takes off, tracing his evolution as a musician through his relationships, his pop culture appearances, and his performances at the Newport Folk Festival. The story is focused and dramatic without offering easy answers about Bob Dylan, the person, and without taking sides in the musical disagreements that serve as the central tension of the film. We see Bob Dylan’s talent, his passions and his ego, but we also understand Seeger’s optimism about folk music’s power, to be untethered from time and resistant to popular trends.

As mentioned above, playing a popular musical artist has long felt like a short cut to Oscar glory, without commanding much more than high budget cosplay, but Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Bob Dylan transcends the worst habits of the genre, embodying a fully understood character who defies audience sympathy. Neither Chalamet nor the film concerns itself with making Bob Dylan likable: he is portrayed as egotistical, casually cruel to those who love him, and so single minded in his pursuit of musical legend that he neglects and betrays his closest relationships without thought. This is a difficult performance, Bob Dylan has been such a public figure for so long, that Chalamet must somehow balance the factual accounts of Dylan from news media and the audience’s own memories of the artist with a skeptic’s eye towards a man who has long tried to control his own image, self-mythologizing himself to the point that it can be unclear what’s real and what’s not. In lesser hands, Dylan would be a frustrating caricature, an SNL sketch of a well known artist. But with Chalamet, the elements of the character that could be frustrating, are intriguing, the more I struggled to understand his desires and motivations, the more I leaned in, hoping to decipher this complete unknown. Chalamet draws the audience in, without compromising the mystery of Bob Dylan. He attracts sympathy for a genius bristling at the manufactured confines of his genre, without apologizing for his selfish behavior. It’s a delicate and powerful performance that drives the entire film.

The acting is the great strength throughout. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger is kind and paternal, exuding a warmth even as he unwittingly pushes Dylan away with his unshakeable devotion to an ideal of folk music as acoustic only. Elle Fanning plays Sylvie Russo, Dylan’s on again off again girlfriend who knew him before he became a star, and struggles to keep his attention as he pursues his musical ambitions. Monica Barbaro is bold and confident as Joan Baez, equal parts enthralled with Dylan’s obvious talent and frustrated with his selfish, uncaring behavior.

There are times when the storytelling falls short, which is to be expected in a film about such an enigmatic figure as Dylan. And as in previous musical biopics, there are some overly familiar character beats and a reliance on playing the hits that is predictable and understandable even when it’s disappointing. But ‘A Complete Unknown’ achieves the rare feat of appealing to those who love Bob Dylan and want to relive an era of New York with his music as soundtrack as well as those who want to be more challenged with complex characters and interesting questions of right and wrong, and somehow delivering a film that will satisfy them all.

A Complete Unknown
Rated R for language.
Running Time: 2 hours and 21 minutes

Director James Mangold
Writers James Mangold, Jay Cocks
Stars Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy
Rating R
Running Time 141 Minutes
Genres Biography, Drama, Music