Unpacking the Mystery and Genius of A Complete Unknown
He practiced for years to bring one of history’s most famous voices to life. But does Timothée Chalamet unlock what makes Bob Dylan tick?
good.film
a month ago
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He’s a stone cold enigma. A shuffling, mumbling icon that’s stood at the forefront of musical ambition for over six decades. Whether you’re “meh” on Bob Dylan, or he’s an instant desert island choice for you, there’s no denying his profound cultural impact. TIME named him one of the 20th century’s 100 Most Influential People, and he was the first ever songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. But how do you make a movie out of an enigma?
American writer-producer-director James Mangold is no stranger to the music biopic–20 years ago, he immortalised chameleonic icon Johnny Cash on screen in Walk the Line, which brought star Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award nomination. Now he’s repeated the trick; his waif-like leading man Timothée Chalamet just landed a widely expected Oscar nod after spending the best part of five years preparing to play Dylan between the ages of 20 to 25.
Why that small slice? Because that half-decade captures the total creative transformation of an artist, one that just-so-happened to coincide with a landmark generational change. More than coincide–Mangold unpacks how Dylan helped create and fuel it. A Complete Unknown is like a time machine, whisking us back to witness a poet’s struggle with artistic authenticity and his eventual rebellion against the American norm. For the times, they were a-changin’.
Okay, don’t keep us hanging–does Chalamet nail Dylan, or not?
We’re no Dylanologists, but you bet. Some great wigs, ace costume design and a subtle prosthetic nose help with the look, but Chalamet skilfully harnesses the aloof essence of this man out of time. A central theme of the film is Dylan’s complex personality; even his girlfriend Sylvie calls him the mysterious minstrel. He is, of course, the complete unknown of the title (it’s one of the key lyrics in his legendary 1965 track Like a Rolling Stone, if you hadn’t clocked it).
Wisely, A Complete Unknown doesn’t try to turn Dylan into something he wasn’t. At first glance he seems painfully awkward–his hero, Woody Guthrie, asks You shy? when they first meet at 20 years old. Dylan answers Not usually… because no, he’s NOT shy. That’s just HIM. Dylan was tough to understand in life, and so he is here. What are his dreams? What motivates him? When he’s asked What do you wanna be? his answer isn’t glamorous: A musician. Who eats.
That bluntness extends to his relationships, too. In one scene, the next frustrated girlfriend tries to crack his shell, pleading I love you–is that scary to you? Bob’s reply is nothing if not honest: I just met you, so–yeah? Through a modern lens, Dylan seems to have plenty of the hallmarks of Asperger's Syndrome (normal intelligence, eccentric behavior, lacking in social skills). But in the 60s, Joan Baez’s assessment is less clinical: You know, you’re kind of an asshole, Bob.
How does A Complete Unknown capture Bob Dylan’s transformation as an artist?
It’s no secret that movies often compress the timeline of real-life events. But even accounting for that, a lot happened in a short space of time for the kid born in Minnesota as Robert Zimmerman. To help us out, Mangold uses the Newport Folk Festival as a recurring signpost in the story–returning each year from 1963 to 1965 to show Dylan’s personal and artistic growth. Across three short years, he metamorphoses from debutant, to hero, to rebel.
In early scenes, Dylan struggles to describe his style; he seems irritated at others’ need to define him. Is he a folk musician, an acoustic balladeer, a bluesman? The best he can come up with to kill the questions: My album's Traditional. But it’s far from the truth. For modern eyes (and ears), Mangold makes it clear that Dylan’s experimental sound is startlingly new to people. At 21, he’s playing at tiny clubs and Harlem churches. But his rise seems inevitable.
Established talents like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) listen to his sets with a mild wonder. He's described as a poet; bursting at the seams with talent. Soon, Dylan’s headlighting the famed Gaslight in NYC, playing with more defiance, more confidence than before. It hints at the core tension in A Complete Unknown. Dylan’s own artistic evolution demands that he forges a new musical path–even if it means alienating his greatest fans.
Why do we keep hearing about Bob Dylan and “authenticity”?
A Complete Unknown looks at Dylan’s shift from a folk music figurehead to a rock pioneer (the screenplay is based on American music journalist Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!). But there’s more to it than just the kind of guitar Dylan’s strumming. There’s a recurring notion in the film that authenticity is more important to him than any other trait; he’s a contrarian, who refuses to play the role that others–particularly those in the folk scene–want him to play.
Mangold gradually feeds Dylan’s so-called rebellion into the story, twinned with his growing fame. The interesting bit is deciding how much one is influenced by the other. After Newport ‘63, he’s getting mobbed in the street; his mailbox has $10,000 cheques one day and glowing fan letters from his peers the next. Jackpot, right? But Dylan describes it like a crushing weight, writing about it as a kind of lament: I’m now famous. It snuck up on me and pulverised me.
Chalamet plays Dylan as not simply annoyed by fame, but almost repulsed by it–like being a celebrity will somehow dilute his gift. He almost fully rejects the performing commodity label. Mangold shows how this affects both his public popularity–like when he refuses to play Blowin’ in the Wind, amid a storm of booing–and his professional rep with the folk establishment. By the time Newport ‘65 arrives, Dylan’s at a crossroads, and he can no longer hold back the tide.
How does A Complete Unknown explore generational change?
McCarthyism. Nukes. MLK. A Complete Unknown sits atop the boiling hotplate of the 1960s. Like a folksy Forrest Gump, Dylan is centred as a pivotal figure in the monumental cultural shifts of the era. At Newport ‘64, his performance of The Times They Are a-Changin’ was nothing short of anthemic; a lightning bolt that spoke to the hearts and minds of a nation reeling from the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination and a sizzling Civil Rights movement.
But a year later, Dylan has evolved again, and Mangold hinges the third act of his film around Newport ‘65, and a war of artistic freedom. Dylan’s no longer the acoustic troubadour; he’s wired for sound, to the disgust of the Newport board. They’re determined to maintain the essence of their gentle protest festival: Just a guitar and a man’s voice. Guess who’s not on board? It’s Dylan as a symbol for a new generation, ready to blow up existing social norms.
In this way, A Complete Unknown builds up Dylan’s acoustic vs. electric decision for his closing set as a metaphor for disruption, as the counter-culture barrelled towards traditional 1960s American values like a battering ram. Or to use his bandmate’s metaphor, as he hollers in disbelief to a resistant Pete Seeger: You're pushing candles and he's sellin' light bulbs! The minds of the old guard are set. But for Bob, the idea of stifling his free expression is anathema.
Inwardly, though, Dylan’s wrestling with self-doubt, admitting to Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), I dunno if they wanna hear what I wanna play. Cash’s reply? I wanna hear it. Make some noise, BD–track some mud on the carpet! Spoiler alert: he made some noise. In Dylan Goes Electric!, Wald describes Dylan’s pivotal electric set on the evening of July 25, 1965 as the shot heard round the world—and one of the defining moments in twentieth-century music.
So what’s the takeaway from A Complete Unknown?
Already, plenty has been said about the authentic look and feel of the biopic that Bob Dylan diehards have been waiting a generation to embrace. And there’s no doubt that A Complete Unknown captures something, well, electric. Like the work of Dylan himself, it’s less a concrete telling and more of an idea. We get an idea of the man, an idea of the time. A whispered yet unassailable sense of how both were fuelled–and irrevocably changed–by the other.
Still, Mangold is careful not to canonize Dylan completely. His first assessment of Joan Baez (straight into a mic in front of a crowd, no less) is that her voice is pretty–maybe a little too pretty. When his girlfriend, Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) probes him to open up with her claim that I tell you everything! he snaps back Yeah, and I never asked to hear any of it. He even groans when his mentor, Pete Seeger, appears. To quote Baez: he’s kind of an asshole.
But just like a string of other real-life movie “assholes” (Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes), A Complete Unknown asks if Dylan’s unfeeling persona is directly proportional to his talent. Perhaps for an era-defining artist to grow, they NEED to outgrow their lovers, mentors and peers. It’s the stuff of a lonely life, and to convey it, Mangold lingers on several emotional shots of the faces of Dylan’s closest allies, watching from side stage as he performs.
Silvie’s tearful eyes hint that she already knows Bob’s rapid ascent means she'll lose her grasp on him. Seeger has the look of a man who realises his peaceful-protest style is being rendered obsolete in real time. And Baez stares at Dylan like he’s an alien crashed to Earth; marooned on a planet that finds him fascinating, but with an atmosphere he’s not built to breathe. Okay Bob, she says, You won. Freedom from all of us, and all of this shit. Isn't that what you wanted?
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