Film Review: A Complete Unknown

A Complete Unknown
Director: James Mangold
Veritas Entertainment Group, Range Media Partners, Turnpike Films
In Theaters: 12.26 

Any discussion of popular music as an art form and its impact on culture in the past century invariably comes back to a select few defining figures. As someone with decidedly limited musical ability but an intense passion for lyrics and poetry, the name Bob Dylan stands above all others. In A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold paints a vivid portrait of an artist who left an indelible mark on his medium. 

A Complete Unknown begins in 1961 as 19-year-old penniless musician Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet Dune, Wonka), shows up in Greenwich Village to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy, Argo, Nightbitch) and sing him a song as he sits in a hospital room, unable to speak due to Huntington’s disease. It’s here that Dylan meets folk legend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, Fight Club), who introduces him to the vibrant music scene. Dylan quickly gains recognition, in part due to his profession and personal relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro, Top Gun: Maverick), who helps make his song Blown’ The Wind into not just a hit, but an anthem for a generation. As Dylan’s fame grows, his evolution from folk singer to rock innovator culminates in his controversial electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival. The film captures Dylan’s relentless creativity, the era’s cultural upheaval and the personal and artistic conflicts that shaped his legacy.

Mangold, who last ventured into the music world with Walk The Line in 2005, co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York), and the two have elegantly adapted Elijah Wald’s 2015 nonfiction book Dylan Goes Electric! : Newport, Seeger Dylan, and The Night That Split The Sixties into an intimate yet larger-than-life journey. The film portrays Dylan as a restless spirit and perfectionistic pioneer whose uncompromising vision makes him both a genius that everyone wants to be next to and an impossibly stubborn brat whom no one can stay close to for very long. Mangold’s movie rises above the clichés and constraints of the genre by focusing on a specific period and events, rather than giving the same tired story of a rise to fame followed by a drug-fueled, self-destructive spiral that we’ve seen so many times before. The director sees the artist  as an icon who absorbed the anger, angst and hope of a nation in turbulent times and gave them a voice, without elevating the person above the brash and immature young man whose endless need for self expression meant an endless focus on himself. The music is obviously integral to the film, and the choice to fill the film with a cast who is up to providing authentic singing voices as well as layered performances makes it a more soulful work than Bohemian Rhapsody or even Ray. The painstaking perfection of Mangold’s incomparable gift for shot composition makes A Complete Unknown as sumptuous visually as it is musically, creating an immersive experience that transported me to another time and place in history.

Chalamet is quite simply electrifying as Dylan, and it’s far more than the eerily perfect vocal impersonation (with a stronger singing voice than Dylan). The brilliant young actor strips down the artifice and steps into the soul of the man, creating a vivid and vibrant characterization that is a mesmerizing at every turn. Elle Fanning (Super 8, The Beguiled) is luminous as Sylvie Russo, a fictionalized version of Dylan’s long-suffering artist girlfriend, Suze Ruttolo (Dylan requested that the filmmakers not use her real name), whose relationship with the famed musician was as turbulent as the ‘60s themselves. Norton gives his most thrilling performance in a number of years, and Barberro outshines them all with her golden-voiced and spirited portrayal of Baez. In fact, my biggest nagging complaint with the film is simply that we never get to hear her solo her way through Blowin’ in the Wind in its entirety, because I happily would pay in full just to enjoy her singing.

A Complete Unknown hits all the right notes and finds storytelling magic in its words; It stands as a cinematic experience that breathes some much needed life into a stagnant genre. It’s an artistic experience and historical chronicle that is not to be missed, and an unforgettable portrait of a man who had to walk down many roads before people called him a legend. –Patrick Gibbs

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