In “A Complete Unknown,” Bob Dylan’s story is retold with the hushed reverence of a Christmas sermon — the savior of music coming to set the world right again. No wonder the movie releases December 25th.
It would be hard to make a film about Bob Dylan that felt any different. Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was the biggest propagator of his own legend. He didn’t want his songs to just speak for themselves — he wanted them to be the only voice in the room. He changed his name, wove a dubious backstory, and stiff-armed anyone who came close to learning who Bob Dylan the man really was. He was a mystery — a complete unknown.
“Are you God, Bob?” Sylvie Russo, Dylan’s girlfriend, sarcastically asks him at one point in the film. “How many times do I have to say this?” Dylan wryly jokes. “Yes.”
With Dylan’s mythology being what it is, letting an artist tell this story was always going to feel like letting a pastor direct a film about Jesus. Creatives hold a reverence for Dylan that it would be difficult to distance themselves from — and director James Mangold doesn’t really try. He’s hyper-focused on Dylan’s mythos rather than what made the songwriter tick. It’s an interesting angle that ends up making this biopic feel more like the Gospel of Bob and less like an exploration of a real person — in both good ways and bad. But it effectively captures what shot Dylan to his now-legendary status in the first place, while gently poking holes in the tale.
The movie opens quietly, with Dylan meeting his hero, folk-singer Woody Guthrie, in the hospital. Dylan doesn’t say much, but he plays “Song to Woody” for Guthrie and fellow folk artist Pete Seeger. It is one of the only times we see Bob have the awe and wonder for someone else that the rest of the world would eventually have for him, and it is an inspired way to begin the film. It’s a glimpse at something true about Dylan’s inner life, something we and the characters in the film never really see again outside of his music. It humanizes Dylan before we are whisked away into the story of his messianic rise.
The plot is fairly paint-by-numbers for anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of Dylan’s early career. He arrives at the epicenter of the folk music scene, Greenwich Village, with just a guitar on his back, quickly falls into music stardom, and later shocks the world by playing his new, electric guitar-driven music at the Newport Folk Festival to the outrage of his folk-loving fans. Mangold is one of a half-dozen artists who have told this tale.
He also dodges exploring who Bob Dylan is beneath his mysterious facade. So Mangold falls back on the next best thing — asking how Dylan’s slippery, enigmatic personality affects everyone around him. The approach, at its worst, is a cop-out from a more interesting character study. But, at its best, it’s quite entertaining and an effective vehicle to explore the power of Dylan’s music.
Just being close to Dylan’s talent is intoxicating to those in his orbit, and Mangold is sure to include plenty of shots of a disinterested Dylan surrounded by starstruck friends. The film clearly finds Dylan’s unrivaled creativity and stubborn aloofness as two sides of the same coin, but it doesn’t whitewash how Dylan’s self-absorption hurts his closest relationships. No one leaves Dylan’s inner circle unscathed. Mangold doesn’t focus on their pain, but he still lets these moments act as counterpoints to the fawning adoration that dominates the film’s runtime.
The movie works mostly, though, on the strength of its performances. Timothée Chalamet portrays Dylan well, especially any time he is behind a microphone. He doesn’t just sound like Dylan — he captures the magic behind Dylan’s lyrics. Mangold knows what he has in Chalamet, and he lets the “Dune” actor’s musical moments breathe rather than rushing to Dylan’s next hit.
The supporting cast is mostly excellent, as well. Edward Norton shines as Pete Seeger, especially in a scene just before the infamous Newport Folk Festival where he implores Dylan to just play his old folk songs. Norton’s barely contained angst contrasted with Chalamet’s bitter indifference is electric. No one is nakedly grasping for an Oscar, a refreshing change of pace from recent biopics, and they sell the pair’s competing interests with a complexity that isn’t necessarily found on the page.
Sylvie Russo, Dylan’s girlfriend played by Elle Fanning, suffers more from what’s not in the script. Fanning does what she can, but Russo doesn’t have much more to do than pine after Dylan.
Chalamet has the most chemistry with Monica Barbaro, who plays folk-singer Joan Baez. More than anyone else, Baez gets close to understanding Dylan beneath his persona — “You are so completely full of shit,” she tells him after he spins her a tale about working at a carnival — but she also feels frustratingly locked out of Dylan’s personal life. The script just skims the surface of the pair’s relationship, but the two actors give strong enough performances that it is easy to overlook the lack of depth.
Mangold’s best choice is making Bob Dylan’s music the real star of the movie. His lyrics are just as magnificent and emotionally resonant as they always have been, and Mangold lingers on the musical performances, letting the audience slip into the beauty of Dylan’s lyrics. “Bob Dylan’s music is really the music of life,” Chalamet said in a Q&A in Atlanta. As flawed as “A Complete Unknown” might be, when it acknowledges the power of Dylan’s songs, it feels like a myth worth retelling.