Jonah Naplan December 24, 2024
The talents of Timothée Chalamet and the music of legendary folk singer Bob Dylan are put on full display in James Mangold’s ravishing new film “A Complete Unknown,” a musical biopic that finally breaks the mold. Inferior offerings from this genre—some from 2024 alone like “Bob Marley: One Love” and “Back to Black”—have sorely tired audiences out with their predictable formulas and “greatest hits collection” linearity that does nothing to add nuance to the story of an artist we know and love. The greatest feat of “A Complete Unknown” is how it completely defies the “this happened, then this happened, then this happened” structure I’ve come to dread and creates something entirely different with a terrific screenplay by Mangold and Jay Cocks. This is a movie that finally allows its principal subjects to really sing, letting the musical compositions themselves tell the story and highlighting all the hard work Chalamet put in to perfectly replicate the voice and personality of Bob Dylan. It’s one of the biggest surprises of the year.
Frankly, I never should have doubted Mangold, whose impressive credits include the emotionally brutal “Logan,” which expertly closed out Wolverine’s story (at least as far as we knew), “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which retained some of that classic Indy charm, and the outstanding “Ford v. Ferrari,” which, for a time, was my favorite film of 2019. There’s something so special about his filmmaking and it’s difficult to describe exactly what. Maybe it’s the professionalism. Perhaps it’s the meticulously-researched narratives that prove the filmmakers did their homework. It could be the talented ensemble that Mangold always hires. I’m guessing it’s a mix of all of these things, but “A Complete Unknown” is one of those special movies that feels warped in from another decade (probably the ‘90s) because of its super-competence and the natural way it shines on-screen like a veteran actor who’s spent a long career on-stage and couldn’t be more comfortable in the spotlight.
It opens on a 20-year-old Bob Dylan (Chalamet) arriving with a guitar and a dream in New York City in 1961. A humble upbringing in a small Minnesota town was very different from a bustling urban life, but Dylan was ready to make a name for himself from the second he stepped off the bus. Over the course of the film, he’ll have run-ins with some of the country’s most decorated folk music stars, impressing and proving his talent to each one of them, beginning with a hospitalized Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in an early scene, playing an original song for him with remarkable virtuosity. It’s here that he also meets Pete Seeger (a wonderful Edward Norton), who we first see fighting for his freedom of speech in court after his music was flagged for promoting social change. A recurring theme of “A Complete Unknown” is how artists are often some of the first people to shed light on civil rights issues and to introduce the general public to potentially controversial new ideas.
The family man Seeger takes Dylan under his wing and allows him to stay at his home while he forges a path of his own. It’s not long before a young woman named Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) catches Dylan’s eye. He’s impressed by her natural talent on-stage and will soon pursue her as both a musical collaborator and romantic partner. Chalamet and Barbaro have electric chemistry together, developing a believable relationship that fizzes and bangs as they both struggle with its machinations. She has different goals in folk music than him, he is simultaneously seeing another woman named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a fictionalized version of the real-life Suze Rotolo, who famously appeared on the cover of Dylan’s 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Chalamet’s chemistry with Fanning isn’t as strong, which could be an intentional choice as much as it could be a mishap; the story proves that Dylan seemed to artistically bond far more with Baez than he did with Russo, anyways.
Everybody seems to see something special in this new musician, including a young, obnoxious Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook, a go-to casting in many of Mangold’s films), who writes regular letters to Dylan to let him know of his admiration. They’ll get to play together eventually, at different folk festivals around the country, including the one in Newport, Rhode Island that rocked the world. Chalamet takes every aspect of this world-wearied novice, from Dylan’s recognizable singing voice to his haircut, and paints a remarkably accurate portrait. If Austin Butler took the trademark nuances of Elvis Presley and put on a boisterous show two years ago, Chalamet puts on an equally spectacular act on a much subtler scale. It’s obvious how much time Chalamet put into perfecting his characterizations as if he sailed himself to a desert island and remained there for years, revising and improving his craft.
He can really sing, too. “A Complete Unknown” does not fall subject to montage or projections of Dylan’s greatest hits over tacky editing. There are so many long, wonderful scenes where Mangold lets Chalamet perform entire songs without cutting away to some other action happening elsewhere. The music is the action. I was beguiled by so many of the musical compositions, entranced by Chalamet’s voice. Where other biopics fail to intrigue an audience through the legendary songs of an artist they know and love, “A Complete Unknown” makes all these concerts, from amphitheatre to living-room-sized, exciting to watch and listen to.
It’s to the movie’s credit that it never voices an opinion on who Dylan was as a person. At the time the story takes place, he’s largely shallow and outright jerkish when it comes to the people around him. We’re a fly on the wall to his success, never allowed inside his psyche. Some people will walk away from the film frustrated that “A Complete Unknown” never makes him likeable as a character (despite our love for him as an artist), and that so many of his decisions throughout the movie are inexplicably selfish and/or reckless. Mangold isn’t trying to change our minds about him either way, simply presenting us the facts and letting us decide how we feel on our own. It’s not a biopic that tries to idolize Dylan or treat him as some sort of god (which is what that awful Bob Marley biopic did in February). Instead, in the best way possible, it’s a bit like reading a nonpartisan Britannica article about Bob Dylan with all the archive recordings you could possibly want and an artistic twinge behind all of the information that proves it was generated by human beings, not software.
The movie already knows fans are gonna eat it all up, reveling in the chance to hear their favorite Bob Dylan songs on an incredible sound system. All of that stuff is great, but Chalamet is so excellent here that he becomes the main attraction. I can’t say that I’m a massive Bob Dylan connoisseur, but you better believe I’ll be returning to some of these concert scenes just to hear Chalamet sing his songs again and again and again.
Now playing in theaters.