A COMPLETE UNKNOWN - Mark Reviews Movies

A Complete Unknown, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 24, 2024

The Bob Dylan of A Complete Unknown isn't so much a character as he is an idea, an ideal, and a mystery to everyone around him. Co-writer/director James Mangold's film starts as a biography of the man's early career—the stuff of music myth and cultural legend, really. Soon enough, though, the filmmaker lets us know that he has bigger things in mind than just recounting the first years of Dylan's fast rise to stardom and his controversial decision to go electric.

The film's Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet, isn't nearly as complicated or enigmatic as the character presents himself, and that's what makes the film such a rich and tricky piece to dissect. Oh, he looks the part of the traveling troubadour, who comes from nowhere special but compensates for that with how genuinely special his music is, and the musical purist, who has so much to say and such passion for saying it that he absolutely must put it into song. Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks, adapting Elijah Wald's non-fiction book, see right through that here.

Part of Dylan's appeal was that he did seem to come out of nowhere and into the folk music revival of the 1960s, when all anyone needed to make music was a guitar and a voice. People already knew the traditional folk songs, and even popular-folk pioneer Woody Guthrie's tunes were becoming the stuff of tradition, too. When Dylan showed up in New York City in 1961, Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" might as well have been written a hundred years ago, instead of just 20, for as quaint as it probably seemed in the face of a Cold War, the civil rights movement, and more wars being fought around the world after two world wars seemed to promise an end to them.

This film contextualizes all of that—the politics, the music, the cultural and societal battle between skepticism and idealism—within the insulated world of the New York folk scene of the early 1960s. To look at this as a biography of Dylan, even if it does follow his career trajectory from '61 to his scandalously plugged-in performance at the Newport Folk Festival in '65, is to perceive it incorrectly. Mangold lets us know this almost from the beginning, too, because Bobby, as the character calls himself initially, is just part of a wider cast of characters within that scene. Meanwhile, the narrative's beats are less about what Bob, as he'll prefer to be called soon enough, and his fellow musicians do and more about the music they play.

Indeed, the film is pretty much wall-to-wall music, either the actual performances of songs, in the studio and on various stages across the country, or the constant writing and discussion/debate and simple taking in of those tunes. The actors here perform those songs themselves, impersonating the famous musicians they're playing, yes, but also with notions of the story in mind.

Some will scoff at the idea of actors trying to replicate the likes of Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Seeger, and Johnny Cash, but to do so also seems to be missing some bigger point. Isn't the tradition of folk music, as stated a couple of times here, that these songs belong to everyone? Why not give new generations a taste of them by way of some different and newer voices?

Chalamet does a convincing Dylan impression, after all, while also injecting the songs with what the film's Bob wants of them in the moment. Playing Baez, Monica Barbaro possesses a similarly angelic voice, which stands in nice contrast to how no-nonsense Joan is when confronted with Bob's barely disguised ego, and Edward Norton's Seeger plucks his banjo and croons with such aw-shucks sincerity that it is genuinely affecting as the young man he partly discovers and helps to become famous gradually breaks his heart and destroys his dreams.

What's really fascinating about the portrayal of Bob here, then, is how he exists as a contradiction even within the film's own estimation of him. On the one hand, he's the man who revolutionizes and comes to personify the best qualities of the period's folk revival, worthy of all the esteem and adoration the faces in the crowd and backstage shine upon him whenever he's performing. Peter and Woody (Scoot McNairy), who's slowly dying in the hospital for the entirety of the story, get a taste of Bob's promise when the young man from Minnesota shows up to Woody's hospital room, tells the man how much his music has meant to him, and plays the pair a song he wrote for the folk legend.

The rest of the story is pretty much the stuff of its own legend at this point, and Mangold smartly treats it as such, moving from one performance to the next, one private scene of Bob keeping friends and lovers and colleagues at a distance to another, and some detail of history to more. The cinematography by Phedon Papamichael replicates the feeling of 1960s New York, while also evolving along with the character—the brightness of the streets, filled with plenty of aural business on the soundtrack, and the warm glow of underground folk clubs accompanying Bob's first year or so transforming into the dim, neon glow of those same streets and the chilly spotlights of bigger venues as the singer becomes frustrated by being stuck to one genre.

There are hints of the other side of Bob, the one that takes over the second half, in the early parts of the film. They're mainly in his romantic—if one can call them that—relationships with Joan and artist Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), both of whom can see Bob for his hidden ambitions and his refusal to attach himself to anything or anyone but can't change how his music makes them feel about him.

The turning point of the film's depiction of Bob comes with his performance of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" at the festival in Newport in '63, as Sylvie realizes she has lost him to undeniable celebrity status and the fans, singing along with the chorus as if they've heard the song their entire lives. As for Bob, he fixes his usually stone face behind his harmonica at the song's end, in order to hide the smile of knowing real fame has finally come his way.

In other words, Mangold gives us plenty of reasons to admire Bob, even as the narrative itself, which is so entrenched in the hope and the potential for social good coming out of the folk movement, gradually turns him into a sort of villain for the very scene that made him. A Complete Unknown is no mere, straightforward biography. It's a melancholy ode to an era filled with strife, a movement filled with optimism, and a man who defined the music, only to upturn it all. The times may change, but generally, people don't.

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