Film Review: A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (directed by James Mangold)

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.
— Bob Dylan

A great old adage puts it this way: “All that is truly original appears ugly at first.” That’s been proven true for every new form of art and music, most appropriately during  the meteoric rise of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, whose early career is the subject of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, now in wide release.

Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro

Few recent films have generated the buzz and controversy surrounding this one, a standout for its attempt to put real events and real people into a manageable context (Jay Cocks co-wrote the screenplay with Mangold). It opens with the scruffy young Dylan’s 1961 arrival in New York City, and closes shortly after his legendary disruption of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he outraged purists by having the audacity to close his performance with an all-electric rock band. The incident provoked a near-riot.

Ed Norton

Between these two bookends lie Dylan’s meeting with folk icon Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who introduces him to producers John Hammond and Albert Grossman (David Alan Basche and Dan Fogler, respectively) and to his hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), mute and confined to a hospital bed with Huntington’s Disease. We meet his semi-fictitious on-again/off-again lover “Sylvie Russo” (Elle Fanning) and watch with fascination his tumultuous relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).

Timothée Chalamet

Timothée Chalamet‘s Dylan is a taciturn iconoclast without Dylan’s prankster/absurdist humor, but he nails the music — and the creative artist’s angst and determination. The real Bob Dylan has praised Chalamet, who purportedly learned to play guitar and harmonica for the role. Chalamet’s voice is astoundingly like the real Dylan’s. Barbaro’s Baez achieves corresponding similarity, if a tad removed from the angelic soprano that Baez exhibited in her early days. The pair are compelling both on and off the performing stage; Baez being the more grounded and more professional of the two. She recognizes that her first duty is to her fans, not to her private problems.

Elle Fanning

Ed Norton is superb as the sweetly sincere and indulgent Pete Seeger. So is Fogler as the perceptive but pushy Albert Grossman. Boyd Holbrook is great as the boozy Johnny Cash, who incidentally never went to prison but did spend some drunken nights in jail. Laura Kariuki has a stunning cameo as Becka, a black British girl that Dylan picks up and drags to an industry party. Folk musicologist/recordist/archivist Alan Lomax is depicted by Norbert Leo Butz as an obnoxious intolerant jackass, a hardcore folkie who hates rock and roll. This characterization may or may not be accurate, but it adds dramatic texture to the film. Writer and musician Elijah Wald, who wrote the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! on which the film is based, offers a fascinating elucidation about Lomax here.

Timothée Chalamet and Boyd Holbrook (photo by Macall Polay)

Dramatic texture is everywhere in A Complete Unknown, including not merely incidental interactions among minor characters, but in the ultra-authentic recreation of music clubs, recording studios, apartments, street scenes, and performance venues (art direction by Christopher J. Morris; costumes by Arianne Phillips). Even the many extras are exceptionally in character. Editing by Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris is spot-on — neither too languid nor too abrupt. The film’s expert pacing carries it along gorgeously from start to finish.

Edward Norton (photo by Macall Polay)

Bob Dylan was and is a genius songwriter. He caught a wave at precisely the right moment and rode it — propelled it — to  enormous success. His exceedingly unmusical voice boosted rather than hampered his career, and his often inscrutable lyrics have been fodder for endless reams of academic analysis.

Timothée Chalamet (photo by James Mangold)

Music fans are generally raving about this film — already a multiple Academy Awards contender — while critics such as Dylan scholar Seth Rogovoy have dismissed it as “a complete failure”  because its storyline isn’t fully accurate. Such curmudgeons need to learn an important concept: plausible historical fiction.

Boyd Holbrook (photo by Macall Polay)

A Complete Unknown may not be an exhaustive, expertly-vetted biography, and it may not be the greatest biopic ever made, but it’s very good. It will stand up well to repeated viewings. That’s not something that can be said about the nonstop stream of instantly forgettable comic book tales and shoot-‘em-ups that are standard Hollywood fare. Go see this in a proper theater and forget your presumptions. You’ll be glad you did.

Monica Barbaro and Timothée Chalamet (photo by Macall Polay)

photos courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: [email protected]