A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, drama, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, James Mangold, Monica Barbaro, movies, music, Pete Seeger, reviews, Scoot McNairy, Timothee Chalamet
December 22, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by James Mangold
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1961 to 1965, in New York City and other parts of the United States, the dramatic film “A Complete Unknown” (a biopic of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asian people) who are connected in some way to Dylan.
Culture Clash: Bob Dylan goes from being an unknown singer to a star in folk music, but he angers and alienates many people when he decides to peform rock music with electric instruments.
Culture Audience: “A Complete Unknown” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of Dylan, the movie’s headliners and well-acted music biopics that are jam-packed with performances.
The Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” greatly benefits from talented cast members who give very credible performances. At times, the movie resembles a compilation of music videos, but Timothée Chalamet is perfectly cast as Dylan. Because the real-life Dylan has a deliberately mysterious public persona, don’t expect this movie to give any further insights that numerous books, feature profiles and documentaries about Dylan haven’t already covered.
Directed by James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown” was co-written by Mangold and Ja Cocks, The screenplay is adapted from Elijah Wald’s 2015 non-fiction book “Dylan Goes Electric.” The movie takes place in chronological order, from 1961 to 1965. It was in 1965 that Dylan controversially evolved from performing acoustic folk music to electric rock music. Predictably, the movie’s big climactic scene (as shown in the “A Complete Unknown” trailers) is the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the event in Rhode Island where Dylan first performed with electric instruments in public and was nearly booed off of the stage.
The title “A Complete Unknown” is taken from a phrase in Dylan’s 1965 anthem “Like a Rolling Stone,” which exemplified his musical metamorphosis. Of course, Dylan went on to even more musical experimentation after 1965, including recording some Christian music albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And it can be argued that Dylan became a lot more interesting after 1965. But as it stands, “A Complete Unknown” capably covers Dylan’s rise to stardom as a young artist in the first half of the 1960s decade. (For the purposes of this review, the real people are referred to by their last names, while characters in the movie are referred to by their first names.)
“A Complete Unknown” begins by showing Bob (whose birth name was Robert Zimmerman) arriving from his native Minnesota to New York City in 1961, when he literally was a complete unknown at the age of 19 or 20. (“A Complete Unknown” was filmed in New Jersey.) The movie hits all the expected beats in depicting how Bob became part of the New York City folk music scene, where Greenwich Village nightclubs such as Cafe Wha? showcased up-and-coming music artists. Bob didn’t like to talk about his past and freely admitted that he fabricated stories about himself to make himself appear more interesting.
Around the same time that Bob relocates to New York City, folk singer Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) is found guilty of contempt of Congress because Pete refused to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Woody doesn’t seem to bothered by this conviction in this high-profile trial. On the courthouse steps, he cheerfully sings Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” in front of assembled reporters and other spectators. Pete later becomes an important mentor to Bob, whom Pete thinks is the ideal artist to make folk music more popular and mainstream.
One of Dylan’s goals as a new arrival in New York City was to find and visit his musical hero Woody Guthrie (played by Scoot McNairy), who at the time was a Huntington’s disease patient at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris County, New Jersey. Huntington’s disease is a genetic brain disorder that causes loss of speech, memory and other physical/mental abilities. After asking people where to find Woody, Bob makes his way to the hospital, where he sees Pete at mute Woody’s bedside.
Pete hands a Woody Guthrie business card that to Bob. The card says on the back, “I’m not dead yet,” which Pete says is given to all of Woody’s visitors. (This is a true story that is part of Dylan’s early history as a performer.) It’s an amusing part of the movie that shows Woody still has a spark of personality. McNairy does an admirable job in his brief appearances in the movie, as he portrays someone who can’t talk and has to express himself in other ways.
It’s in this hospital scene that viewers first see Bob open up and show who he really is as an artist and perhaps as a person. Bob is star-struck by Woody, who is curious about this young stranger who says he’s a big fan of Woody. Bob ends up playing an original song that he wrote for Woody. In response, Woody seems emotionally moved and knocks on a nearby dresser table in approval. It’s all a young Bob needs for encouragement. In real life and in the movie, Dylan wrote 1962’s “Song for Woody” shortly after this encounter with Guthrie.
“A Complete Unknown” is a story about Bob being torn between folk music and rock music, with many people telling him that he had to choose between one or the other. The movie also shows that Bob faced a similar situation in his love life, when he got caught up in a love triangle with a young progressive activist/college student named Sylvie Russo (played by Elle Fanning) and folk singer Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro), who was a star on the rise when she first met Bob. Idealistic and vulnerable Sylvie wants to have a “normal life,” while independent and confident Joan most certainly does not want this type of “normalcy” as a well-known artist and activist.
Bob meets Sylvie during a church service. They have an instant attraction to each other and begin dating immediately. In real life, the character of Sylvie Russo was really Suze Rotolo, who was photographed walking down a street with Dylan for the cover of Dylan’s 1963 breakthrough album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” In this album cover photo, the body language between the then-couple is an indication that the relationship wasn’t going to last: Dylan and Rotolo are walking with their arms locked, but Rotolo is leaning in close to Bob in a snuggling manner, while Dylan is looking down, with his hands in his trouser pockets.
In the movie, Sylvie is portrayed as Bob’s first major love (Bob eventually moves in with Sylvie), but she’s frustrated by his aloofness and his refusal to talk about his past or his family, while she has been open with him about all of the things abut herself that she wants to know about him. A turning point comes when Sylvie goes away for a trip to Rome. And during this trip, Bob becomes intimately involved with Joan after they meet at a nightclub and start a flirtation that is eventually consummated.
Joan’s manager Albert Grossman (played by Dan Fogler) eventually sees Bob’s talent and quickly signs on to be Bob’s manager too. “A Complete Unknown” somewhat over-simplifies the process of how Bob got a record deal with Columbia Records. One minute, Bob is his manager and some record company people see Bob performing at a nightclub. Not long after that, Bob gets signed to Columbia Records after doing an audition, where he casually showed up more than one hour late.
The movie briefly depicts Bob’s frustrations when his first album (1962’s “Bob Dylan”) is a flop, while Joan continues to be a hit-making artist. “A Complete Unknown” acknowledges and portrays the huge influence that Joan had on Bob’s career, as she frequently brought him on stage to perform with her when he was still a fairly unknown artist. Chalamet and Barbaro’s charismatic duet performances as Bob and Joan are among the movie’s best standout scenes.
The power dynamic between Bob and Joan is interesting to watch in the movie because who seduced whom is left open to interpretation. Certainly, Bob enjoyed the perks of Joan’s help in his career, but there are many indications that he eventually expected to surpass her in artistic and hitmaking importance. It’s left mostly unspoken, but the performances show that Joan having more power and fame early in the relationship was something that Bob both liked and feared. He would insult her artistic talent to her face, perhaps as a way to soothe his ego and feel like he wasn’t just being a “boy toy” to Joan.
“A Complete Unknown” spends some time showing how Bob was able to juggle his on-again/off-again relationships with Sylvie and Joan during this time period, until neither relationship became sustainable. Each woman knew about the other but didn’t really want to get in any major confrontations with each other about it. Sylvie becomes increasingly insecure when she begins to understand that she’s not cut out to be the love partner of a celebrity. Joan has her own issues with Bob, who seems to love Joan but he’s competitive with her.
“A Complete Unknown” depicts Bob as being less concerned what his girlfriends think of him and much more concerned about the opinions of his mentor Pete and another musician whom Bob greatly admires: rebellious country singer Johnny Cash (played by Boyd Holbrook), nicknamed the Man in Black. Johnny shows up in the movie from time to time to give Bob encouragement and advice. The movie portrays Bob and Johnny becoming pen pals after Johnny sent Bob a note saying that “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was Johnny’s “most prized possession.”
When Bob meets Johnny at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival, Bob is just as star-struck as when he met Woody, but at this point Bob is famous and is very self-conscious about “playing it cool” for the Man in Black. The movie’s dialogue for Johnny tends to be more like soundbites than meaningful dialogue. (Johnny tells Bob to surprise people and “make a mess” of people’s expectations.) “A Complete Unknown” also downplays the drug use that happened in real life, by showing only brief references to Bob smoking marijuana and Johnny’s addictions to amphetamines and alcohol.
Pete gets much more screen time than Johnny because Pete was a more permanent presence in Bob’s life. Pete is depicted as a happily married family man who is generally open-minded and laid-back. However, one thing he is fiercely passionate about is the idea that Bob should remain true to his folk roots and not experiment with any other type of music. Pete and many others in the folk music industry feel strongly that it would be a major betrayal if Bob turned his back on folk music to perform rock music.
“A Complete Unknown” is a feast for viewers who want to see scenes of Bob performing on stage and in recording studios. Dylan classics such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “These Times They Are A-Changing” and Like a Rolling Stone” are among the songs that get rousing showcases. However, the movie’s editing often places these performances in between dialogue-heavy scenes so that these performances look like chunks of music videos dropped into this biopic drama. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but the musical sequences could have flowed a little better. “A Complete Unknown” should keep viewers interested if they are already inclined to like Dylan’s music, while it might take others a little longer to feel engaged with this 140-minute movie.
What’s most impressive about “A Complete Unknown” is how Chalamet, Barbaro, Norton and Holbrook are able to perform as Dylan, Baez, Seeger and Cash in ways that look natural and not like “try-hard” impersonations. The movie avoids being a hagiography because it portrays Dylan as flawed and self-centered, with his quest to be an “important” artist as the highest priority in his life. Most superstar entertainers have these qualities before, during and after their ambitions to make it to the top of their profession. However, many have mixed feelings about fame and are often unprepared for the problems that come with being a celebrity. “A Complete Unknown” touches on Bob’s discomfort with fame, but because the movie ends in 1965, “A Complete Unknown” can only be snapshot of a certain period of Dylan’s life and not his complete story.
Searchlight Pictures will release “A Complete Unknown” in U.S. cinemas on December 25, 2024.