“A Complete Unknown” Review

What helps James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown not feel like a standard musical bio-pic is that it never tries to be all-encompassing. In a year with such sprawling musician biographies about Pharrell Williams and Robbie Williams, this picture of Bob Dylan feels more introspective for being so contained. It doesn’t try to pack his entire life into a 2-hour box but instead explores the road to his controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. In this sense, the film isn’t so much about Bob Dylan as it is about the world that crafted him.

The good news is that Timothée Chalamet does justice in his depiction of a young Bob Dylan. It’d be easy for this portrayal to fall into caricature, but Chalamet is careful in making Dylan not too rambly or quiet. The film focuses on the moments that mattered most in the artist’s rise to fame. One of the most pivotal moments is when he visits his idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who is dying in a hospital bed. Sitting next to Woody is the iconic Pete Seeger, played with surprising ease by Edward Norton. Recognizing talent, Pete gives Bob that chance to strum a song for an ailing Woody, and you can feel the same spark of inspiration when Chalamet delights in musical form.

The political revolution of the 1960s was responsible for inspiring Bob Dylan as much as he inspired the cause. There are many meaningful moments in Dylan’s musical performances. We get glimpses of his world from the civil rights movement to the Cuban missile crisis, all treated with earthquake power that shakes America. But Mangold makes the wise call to lock this era within the performances of the central character. That’s a risky gamble considering Chalamet better be damn good in the role to justify the lessening of the historical bullet points, but it pays off immensely. Every scene where Chalamet sings as Dylan resonates so well that it’s impossible to look away from the influences woven within the American music scene.

Dylan is fascinated with the women that come into his life. Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) or Suze Rotolo, if you want the real name, becomes a girlfriend who struggles to figure out her boyfriend who buries himself so deep in his creativity he becomes more of a puzzle than a person. Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) feels a similar frustration, even though she’s closer to his world as a musician. They both struggle to dig deeper into Bob, but Dylan’s obsession with music is so active and divergent that it becomes an impossible challenge. Even Dylan himself doesn’t fully comprehend his influence, as he admits to being terrified of love from people he hardly knows.

The film never drags, thanks to a robust script that recognizes the most compelling components of this era. It also helps that there’s a strong cast populating this story that never feels like simplistic characters. The intriguing performance by Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash is worth noting, playing a man who delights in the same clouds of fame that he shares knowing exchanges with Dylan. Not only is Holbrook giving a strong performance, but his depiction of Cash provides the perfect snapshot of the status that Dylan could attain and the mess he could become.

A Complete Unknown grounds Bob Dylan in a film that treats him less as a mythological figure and more as the drifter who changed folk music. On the base level of Chalamet performing as a musical legend, he doesn’t disappoint, and there’s a talent that Mangold allows to unfold without a lot of showy editing or a blur of events. We get to spend plenty of time with Dylan and his influences, feeling that same drive about wanting to say so much through music, never resorting to the same repetitious tone. There’s a satisfying freedom that Dylan evoked in his music, and that same sense of casual drifting can be felt, even in the moments where he tries to fight his way out of the box that fame could build for him. An assuring and warm feeling comes with such a film, becoming more than just a showcase of Chalamet playing Dylan (though he does nail it well). Come for the performances, stay for the creative drive in an era that demanded revolution.