A Complete Unknown (2024)
Writer/director James Mangold helped usher in the modern age of musical biopics with his Oscar-winning Walk the Line. He's returned to the genre with the mostly satisfying A Complete Unknown, which is about the early days of Bob Dylan's career.
Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) leaves
small-town Minnesota for New York City in 1961. He's hoping to visit folk music
legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in the hospital. When visiting Guthrie,
Dylan plays a song that impresses both Guthrie and fellow folk singer Pete
Seeger (Edward Norton Jr.). Seeger gets Dylan gigs that lead to increased fame
in Greenwich Village's burgeoning folk music scene.
As Dylan becomes a bigger and bigger
star, he juggles two romantic relationships: one with fellow folk singer Joan
Baez (Monica Barbaro) and the other with art student Sylvie (Elle Fanning).
Dylan's secretiveness and contrarianism exasperate his lady friends, as well as
his colleagues. And what little he does reveal about himself (like working in a
carnival) seems like a probable fabrication.
Eventually, Dylan tires of playing
standard folk songs and decides to shift to electric guitar, which sparks a
major controversy at the Newport Folk Festival. It may seem silly to modern
viewers, but Dylan choosing to play with an electric guitar was a major source
of controversy and lead to enraged audience members shouting "Judas!" at him.
The film's strengths include a vivid
sense of time and place. Aside from an immersive view into the New York folk
scene of the early '60s, it also gives viewers a glimpse at how ordinary people
viewed events like the Cuban Missile Crisis as it was happening. The
performances are strong. Chalamet is completely convincing as Dylan both in
dialogue and in song. Norton does great work as Seeger, too, conveying the
man's inherent decency even as he gets frustrated by Dylan.
In terms of weaknesses, the fact that
Dylan intentionally cultivated a mysterious persona makes it a little hard for
viewers to feel like they truly know him. Also, there are a lot of musical
performances in this film. That's not a problem for fans of Dylan's music (this
writer is a fan), but people who dislike Dylan's music might grow weary of all
the songs.
