Early in the Bob Dylan biopic ‘A Complete Unknown,’ Pete Seeger (played by a charismatic Edward Norton) says that “a good song can change the world.” As I’m watching the film, it’s not just the world that changes. I cued in on the way this movie is about how Bob Dylan (played by Timothee Chalamet) and his music changes everyone around him and, at some point, even himself. The power of his music gives him fame and fortune and this changes him and pushes him to evolve and transform both musically and as a person. This leads up to a famous performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 wherein he is booed and jeered by his folk fans while bringing in a new, younger audience by changing his sound to include electric instruments.

Directed by James Mangold and written by Mangold and Jay Cocks (based on the book ‘Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald), ‘A Complete Unknown’ chronicles the time of Bob Dylan from 1961 to 1965. A young Bob Dylan travels to New Jersey to visit his idol, folk singer Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy), at the hospital. There he meets Pete Seeger and when he plays a song for the two folk singers, he impresses them so much that Seeger offers him a place to stay and helps introduce him to the New York folk scene.

In the whirl of it all, he impresses studio executives from CBS Records who sign him up, catches the eye of folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), while dating Sylvie (Elle Fanning), a young artist who frequents the folk scene. His meteoric rise to fame finds him becoming pen pals with Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), being recognized anywhere and everywhere, having affairs, and feeling trapped and imprisoned by his contract and his connection to the folk music scene. His need to evolve, to grow leads him to explore a larger, bigger sound, which threatens to turn away his most ardent fans who love his folk music.

Mangold keeps the story focused in keeping Dylan an enigmatic character and hints at a backstory that is far different from the persona he is trying to project. In fact, it’s a continuing reason for his and Sylvie’s strained relationship: the fact that he is an unknown entity to her. He shares nothing of his past – and in the film, never really does – and this adds to the tension to their relationship. The executives and fans only love him for his music and his success that they don’t care to ask the important questions and when he begins his affair with Baez, she too is attracted to the genius of his songwriter and his mysterious character. But her close proximity to Dylan gives her clarity and perspective, and she even rebukes him.

No, the film does not try to humanize Dylan but turns him into a fable of any man or woman who has a dream of making it big in the music industry and discovering that fame and fortune can be a prison. The film is careful to show the political unrest of the era – the assassination of JFK and Martin Luther King are mentioned – and this backdrop of America in flux runs parallel to Dylan’s need to grow. His politically charged songs need larger breath and a bigger sound. But expectations are holding back and holding him down.

Chalamet is wonderful, as always. I’m not the biggest fan of his off-camera persona but he always gets lost in a role and I’m not surprised he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for this performance. Not only is he inhabiting Bob Dylan’s persona but he’s playing his instruments live and singing the hell out of Bob Dylan’s songs.

His magnetic performance keeps you glued to the screen even as the film refuses to show us Dylan’s inner world. Chalamet does all of this with the flourishes behind his eyes. In fact, Chalamet, Barbaro, Norton, and Holbrook all perform their instruments and sing live and it captures a time I’m very familiar with because these are the songs of my father, and he played them all the time in his room. This is a world I knew quite a bit about from the stories of my dad and seeing it and the Chelsea Hotel and singing songs that were playing loudly when I was a kid takes me back. 

Mangold doesn’t try to dazzle us with complex filmmaking. The camera is just there to capture the authenticity of the performances, allowing the script to do its job in showing us what change looks like: it’s rough and chaotic. Sometimes it strips down everything to rebuild upon the ashes. And as Bob Dylan sings (and as heard in the movie), “The times are a-Changin’.”

My Rating:

A Complete Unknown is now showing in cinemas. Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.