Another Side of Bob Dylan

The title of the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, is not just a reference to a famous line from Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” It is the entire thesis of James Mangold’s film in three words. In A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s Dylan arrives in New York City in early 1961 with the clothes on his back, an acoustic guitar, and a name that he chose for himself. He shuffles anonymously through Greenwich Village’s clubs and coffee shops. No one gives this scruffy kid a second look. Not until they hear him play.

Pretty soon, Dylan becomes a Village favorite. Within a few years, he’s an international star, and so big and influential than when he dares to buck the trend toward socially relevant folk music that he helped bring into the mainstream, he’s labeled a Judas by his own fans. But the motivations behind that decision and many others he makes throughout A Complete Unknown are left opaque. As a musician, Dylan is clearly a genius. As a man, he remains a complete unknown.

A biography that reinforces its subject’s mysteries rather than illuminates them is a valid choice for a Dylan film, and one Dylan himself would probably appreciate if he ever gets around to watching A Complete Unknown. But I am not sure it is an entirely rewarding one to the paying customer who goes to see this.

Yes, this movie is well-made. But what, ultimately, does it add to our understanding of Dylan, or to great artists in general? What do we take away from this story, except that Dylan followed his muse, wrote incredible music, and left the rest to others to sort out for themselves? These are questions I am still wrestling with even as I’m writing this review.

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I know this much: Timothée Chalamet is genuinely impressive playing (and singing!) the young Bob Dylan. A Complete Unknown is not a biopic like Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, which barely concerned itself with the musical legacy of Leonard Bernstein, and focused instead on his complicated marriage and private life. A Complete Unknown overflows with Dylan music, from “Song For Woody,” strummed by Chalamet’s Dylan in a hospital room for Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), to “Like a Rolling Stone,” blasted by Dylan and his backing band at the stunned throngs gathered at 1965’s Newport Film Festival.

All of the music is performed by Chalamet, doing a very credible Dylan croon — and doing an even more impressive job of inhabiting Dylan away from the microphone. His tics, his stammers, his evasive glances, his endless obfuscations. Beyond his wild mop of brown hair, Chalamet doesn’t really look much like Dylan. And Dylan is vastly different from ascendant emperor Paul Atreides in Dune, or from the aspiring chocolatier in Wonka. For a guy who  looks basically the same in every single role he takes on, Chalamet sure has developed an impressive chameleonic quality.

Mangold surrounds Chalamet with a terrific ensemble. Edward Norton plays an awed, frustrated Pete Seeger who recognizes the potential in Dylan, and perhaps envies it as well, and tries to guide the young folkie’s career in the ways he would have wanted if he were just coming into his own as an artist in the early ’60s. Elle Fanning plays Sylvie, a fictionalized version of Dylan’s girlfriend in this period, perhaps the last person outside the world of show business who would ever be close to him. And Monica Barbaro plays Joan Baez, who forged a fiery connection with Dylan both on and off-screen.

A Complete Unknown’s screenplay, written by Mangold with frequent Martin Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks and based on a book by journalist Elijah Wald called Dylan Goes Electric!, charts Dylan’s rise to fame and then his growing interest in rock and roll and pop, much to the consternation of old-school folk singers like Seeger and his colleagues at the Newport Folk Festival. Whether you will get invested in the battle over Dylan’s musical soul may depend on how much you know or care about the man himself, and how much you know about how these events played out in real life.

Beyond them, there isn’t an enormous amount of dramatic tension or suspense in the film. A Complete Unknown is not a traditional take on “The Bob Dylan Story.” It’s more a loving evocation of 1960s New York City, with its smoky bars and chilly dives, and of the wider social and political upheaval that birthed this remarkable talent — who then decided he was more interested in things beyond protest songs and campaigning for civil rights. For Dylan, the times were always a’changing.

So does that justify a movie that adds so little to our understanding of Dylan? A Complete Unknown is beautiful, it’s got a wonderful texture of authenticity, and it’s got one remarkable song after another. (The soundtrack will be incredible … provided you want to hear Timothée Chalamet sing “Girl From the North Country.”) And when the movie was over, I walked out of the theater and thought to myself … “Okay, but, so what?”

I believe Mangold directed the Dylan movie he wanted to, and in some ways A Complete Unknown is interesting precisely because it is a willfully withholding portrait of an enigmatic star. Then again, it’s hard to make a completely satisfying movie about a subject that its director seems to believe cannot be understood.

Additional Thoughts:

-The other key player in this biopic is Johnny Cash, a colleague and admirer of Dylan’s — and the protagonist of a previous James Mangold movie biopic, Walk the Line, which starred Joaquin Phoenix as Cash. This time, Boyd Holbrook assumes the role, and mostly plays the country singer as a lovable rogue rather than a tortured gunslinger. It’s fun to see Mangold present another side of Cash, even if only for a couple of scenes.

RATING: 7/10