In response to the mythos that surrounds him, Bob Dylan once said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.” The music legend always had a playfully deceitful and strongly guarded perspective on personal identity. Of the many books, biographies, and documentaries, time has revealed that a great deal of the “facts” surrounding his pre-fame life were actively constructed. As a creator, the poet/songwriter has designed different versions of himself to fit the times in which he existed. Bob Dylan has lived many lives throughout his 60-plus year career and director James Mangold understands the futility of making a film that covers such a long and ever-changing life. With A Complete Unknown, the director focuses on Dylan’s beginnings up to the moment he went electric and changed popular music forever. This fantastic biopic captures the essence of Dylan the man, his process, and the poetry of his music.

Few filmmakers have dared try to conquer the Bob Dylan story on film. The two most successful attempts being Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary, No Direction Home and Todd Haynes’ musical drama, I’m Not There from 2007. Scorsese managed the impossible, using hundreds of hours of footage (and a rare sit-down interview with his subject) to examine Dylan’s impact on the music and culture of the 20th century. Haynes’ film brilliantly showed the different stages of the singer’s life through his music; casting six actors to portray different facets of his persona, not the man as a whole.

Both films took a unique perspective in their exploration of the chameleon poet, but A Complete Unknown is the first to cast an actor to fully portray him inside and out. Timothée Chalamet rises to the occasion, exceeds expectations, and gives not only the finest performance of his career, but one of the finest of 2024. 

Chalamet’s incredible attention to detail allows him to fully become Bob Dylan, a man whose characteristics and mannerisms could (for a lesser performer) open the door to pantomime. The actor doesn’t just lean into his portrayal, he disappears completely; masterfully embodying the way Dylan sits, walks, and carries himself when around others. Chalamet perfectly nails Dylan’s nasal vocal style and speech patterns, while performing the music and songs like he had been doing them all of his life. Close your eyes and you are listening to Dylan himself. Chalamet’s instincts as an actor serve him well here, as his truly astonishing performance expertly traverses the complexities of such a complicated soul. The actor finds a way in, moving beyond the public persona to connect with the vulnerability behind the legend. There isn’t a false moment in this incredible lead performance. When he is on screen, Timothée Chalamet is no more. In commitment, execution, and his uncanny ability to become Bob Dylan, this is the young actor’s Jake LaMotta. Oscar will most certainly be calling. 

Written by director Mangold and Jay Cocks (based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric), A Complete Unknown covers Dylan’s arrival to New York’s Greenwich Village in 1961 and his quick rise to fame,concluding with his legendary set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where the man became the legend and changed modern music forever. A transformative moment, Dylan would blend traditional folk (which was expected to be acoustic) with the blaring guitars of Rock and Roll and became the rock star he always wanted to be. This profound moment in musical history is where Mangold and Cocks end their film. Dylan keeps himself at too far a distance from his public. To venture any further into his ever-changing life would be a fool’s errand. 

The smartest decision Mangold and Cocks make is to steer clear of psychoanalyzing Bob Dylan. What their excellent screenplay does so well is embracing the rapid changes in his personality while capturing his creative spark and the way his work sets the music world ablaze. 

The film begins with a twenty-year-old Bob Dylan arriving in New York City to meet his musical hero, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy),who is in a hospital and unable to communicate verbally due to Huntington’s disease, which would eventually kill him in 1967. When Dylan arrives in Guthrie’s hospital room, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, Oscar-worthy perfection) is at his bedside. Dylan sits at Guthrie’s bedside and plays “Song to Woody”, a tribute to his hero. Mangold uses this moving moment to pinpoint when, in Folk music, the old ways and the new met at the crossroads. After Dylan performs his song, Seeger and Guthrie embrace the power of the moment, signifying the rise of a new talent; one who encompasses all they have taught. In this life-changing meeting of songwriters, the two elder statesmen see themselves in the young man. This Bob Dylan is the embodiment of what he would later write in his song, I Shall Be Released, “Yet I swear I see my reflection, Some place so high above this wall.”

As Seeger invites the young man to stay with him, Dylan’s career begins to take shape. He begins to perform in the folk music houses of the Village, which puts him on the radar (and into the heart) of Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). While his connection with Baez is legendary and would be the source of some of the pair’s best songs on their respective albums, it came at a cost. Dylan’s long suffering girlfriend Sylvie (an excellent Elle Fanning) would find her love for him shoved aside, as the singer’s ego and desire for the kindred poetic spirit he found in Joan Baez would carry him away from the purity of Sylvia’s dedication. In the film’s only name change, Sylvie is based on Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s first love/muse and the woman who appears on the cover of his 1963 album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The singer requested Rotolo’s real name be changed, as he has expressed regret for his treatment of her after the demise of their relationship. The cutting song Ballad in Plain D is about the end of their coupling. Dylan has never performed it live. 

A Complete Unknown expertly illustrates how Dylan evolves with each personal encounter. Where Sylvia is love and devotion, Baez is music and poetry embodied in a woman who will see through his bullshit, but still succumbs to the undeniable sexual attraction between them. Their infamous relationship finds Dylan moving from the quiet troubadour to the more bold and sometimes insultingly honest budding music star. In a post-coital conversation, Dyaln insults Baez’s lyrics, telling her, “Your songs are like paintings at a dentist’s office.” solidifying the divide between the two that would last for decades. To this day, Joan Baez admits to the lasting emotional scars from her time with Dylan. Her 1975 classic, Diamonds and Rust, is about the effects of their time together. 

The many people who played an important part in Bob Dylan’s life and career are handled well. Boyd Holbrook is striking as Johnny Cash. His few scenes with Chalamet show the actor taking a page from his costar and nearly morphing into the country music legend. The two musicians became fast friends and admirers and it was Cash who encouraged Dylan to blow up audience’s expectations. The Cash portrayal is so perfect, one wishes Mangold would do another Johnny Cash movie, this time with Boyd Holbrook.

Dylan’s friendship with Pete Seeger is the most deeply felt. There is something heartbreaking watching Seeger do his best to keep up to the fire that is Bob Dylan’s rise. The film (and Norton) treats Seeger tenderly without pushing him to sainthood. The singer was, by all accounts, a good man who wanted to keep the purity of Folk music alive while bringing about social change. As Dylan experiments more and more with Rock, Seeger finds their connection fraying. A moment on his cable access show is quite telling. Seeger’s guest is a blues guitarist, Jesse Moffette (Chicago bluesman, Big Bill Morganfield) as Dylan is a no show. When he shows up and interrupts the broadcast, Dylan and Moffette bond over the music, while Seeger tries his best to keep up; the scene a precursor to the old ways giving ebay to the new. As Dylan fused Folk and Rock, Seeger’s steadfast resistance to change would marginalize him and his contemporaries.

Mangold’s direction has a transcendent quality that compliments the way Bob Dylan glides through the many layers of his changing personalities. The director, production designer François Audouy, and cinematographer Phedon Papamichal capture the period without an in-your-face style. From the clothes to the cars to the vibe, the representation of the time is organically felt, as Dylan cuts his legendary path through the sixties. 

At the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, backed by members of Paul Butterfield’s Blues band, Bob Dylan went electric. His first song was “Maggie’s Farm”, a rebellious song that spits at the face of those who would conform. The audience responded with boos and disdain, although in reality there were some cheers. This is the moment where Dylan became a rock star. The performance is an explosion of great filmmaking and an actor’s supreme talents. Mangold and Chalamet and the rest of the cast make this one of the most electrifying musical scenes ever put to film. Angered by the audience’s hostile reaction to this great music,  Dylan aggressively plays to the unruly crowd. As Mangold and his editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris cut from the performance to the crowd and back to the festival administrators losing their shit, the moment becomes a riveting cinematic experience.

Once Dylan left the stage, the world of Folk music was changed forever. The quiet of the following day finds Baez and Seeger in awe, but sidelined to Dylan’s meteoric rise. The echoes of his lyrics are in their eyes, “Your sons and your daughters, Are beyond your command, Your old road is rapidly agin’… For the times they are a-changin’”

Bob Dylan has praised Timothée Chalamet’s performance, but has said that, while he likes the film, “It isn’t definitive.” Dylan is a man who exists where truth and fiction collide. While certain dramatic license is necessary when bringing true stories to the screen, Mangold’s film is a perfect representation of a personality so fabled. 

A Complete Unknown is one of the best musical biopics ever made. 

A Complete Unknown opens Christmas Day in theaters everywhere.

A Complete Unknown 

Written by James Mangold & Jay Cocks

Directed by James Mangold

Starring Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, Dan Folger

R, 141 Minutes, Searchlight Pictures, Veritas Entertainment