The enigmatic, elusive genius of The Bard, Bob Dylan, has long fascinated the world, not at least filmmakers, D.A. Pennebaker, Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, John Hillcoat, and even the Coen Brothers (what is “Inside Llewyn Davis,” if not a what-if-he-failed version of the Zimmy story). No one’s really dared to do a straight biopic version of the Dylan legend because it’s too mythological, too monumental—too many evolutions, too many twists and turns—but filmmaker James Mangold (“Ford Vs. Ferrari”) comes closest with the absolutely magnetic and superb “A Complete Unknown.” Yet, clearly a devout Dylanogist, he, along with all the other scholars, innately understood a movie could be made about every four-to-six years of the Nobel Prize-winning artist’s long and winding life. So, Mangold zeroes in on his first major transformative snake-shedding shapeshift: from young folk voice-of-a-generation to plugged-in electric rocker with attitude—a seismic storm that upended the musical world.
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“A Complete Unknown,” taking its name from Dylan’s iconic song, “Like A Rolling Stone”— about an endlessly everchanging, nomadic life, fitting for his artistic métier —captures a brief, but accelerated snapshot of time in Dylan’s life, from 1961 and his pilgrimage from Minnesota to New York to the summer of 1965 when Dylan, plugged in, went electric and controversially betrayed many of his folk purist following.
Beginning days after his odyssey, Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), 19 years old, travels to New Jersey to visit his legendary folk hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who is hospitalized, ailing from Huntington’s disease and unable to speak or sing. There, he meets, another folk legend and humanist activist visiting Guthrie, the amiable Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), fresh off a contempt of Congress for refusal to answer personal and political questions that infringed his First Amendment rights during the tail-end of the McCarthyism era.
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Moving both Guthrie and Seeger with his folk song dedicated to his hero, the latter soon takes him into his home and introduces him around the folk scene in New York—the artist quickly making a huge impression immediately with anyone lucky enough to witness his initial performances, including Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and the opportunistic manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), who tells all prospective agents that Dylan is already his client, when they haven’t even yet met.
From there, Mangold’s film is essentially a whiplash-inducing and meteoric rise of ascendance— rocketing to stardom, grappling with fame, juggling his love life, eclipsing his heroes, and the dark side of radiant prominence.
All the while, Dylan is in the maelstrom of the chaos around him—trying to adjust and survive, while just wanting to make music (think that legendary photo of Kurt Cobain at a Nirvana Nevermind album launch party, completely overwhelmed by the attention and bedlam). However, contradictions are landmines everywhere—part of any knowing Dylan story is the complexity of this musician and all his very real human flaws. As Dylan sings in “I Contain Multitudes,” Mangold’s film tries to reconcile Bobby’s ambitiousness with his artistic purity, and it often gets messy—as do Dylan’s muddled relationships.
He lives with the loyal and accommodating Sylvie Russo (a remarkable Elle Fanning playing a thinly-veiled version of real-life ex-girlfriend at the time Suzie Rotolo), but he’s having an on-and-off again affair with Baez who has a love/hate relationship with his artistry and growing arrogance.
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The crux of “A Complete Unknown,” however, much like the titular song it takes its name from about unending revolution, is Dylan’s very punk-rock rejection of dogma and refusal to be defined. Dylan was always restless, spiritually and artistically. That quality, magnified and exacerbated by the demands of fame and the inflexible doctrines of the claustrophobic folk scene that put him up on an unrealistic pedestal leads him to disdain for idolatry and a complete refusal to be defined as one thing and one thing only.
Mangold’s film is essentially a metaphor about all those trying to treat Dylan as an object to be adored—from a fan trying to touch his clothes or intrusively snatch a lock of hair, to the folk purists demanding he lead their political protest revolution—everyone greedily wants their piece of his soul and their pound of flesh.
And, of course, Dylan, recalcitrant to the bone, the type of kid who, when asked to jump, doesn’t say how high, but questions why one should jump at all, isn’t having it. Going electric is as much an artistic evolution as it is a big f*ck you, “I won’t do what you told me” kiss-off and denial. The infamous choice reverberates around the world and pisses off his legions, but it’s the only way forward.
Mangold achieves so much emotional and psychological mileage out of Dylan’s relationships; how aspiration supersedes romance, how callousness calcifies with fame and how heartbreak is commensurate with levels of celebrity.
And to a more practical, “but how is it?” end, Mangold’s film is outstanding on every level. The cast is phenomenal, but as great as Chalamet is, and he proves he’s the real deal, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro and even Norton may slightly outshine him—the ensemble is that good. Also noteworthy: Boyd Holbrook as the admiring friend Johnny Cash, encouraging his defiant mien, and Norbert Leo Butz as the inflexible field recorder Alan Lomax.
One hates to spend too much time on awards talk, but it will not surprise if everyone and every element of Mangold’s film is nominated to the hilt. Phedon Papamichael’s moody, shadowy cinematography capturing the rain-soaked streets of ’60s Manhattan is so evocative, Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris’ composed editing means there’s not a second of fat on this captivating film and the music, my god.
If Chalamet’s performance is an A or an A-, then his performances, singing and guitar playing is a A++++, and he should arguably win all the awards for not only nailing all of Dylan’s songs but imbuing them with the arresting power they always contained and are deserving of.
Likewise, if the David Fincher adage— there are many ways to shoot a scene, but only one perfect way to truly achieve it—is true, then Mangold chooses absolutely every perfect manner to compose the musical performances, the most astonishing ones being the intimate solo performances on just an acoustic guitar. That said, when “A Complete Unknown” rocks, it slays, and the rambunctious blues, boogie-woogie rock of those Dylan days is like a powerhouse rock concert (and it certainly doesn’t hurt if you’re a fan of the music).
Similarly, Mangold realizes awe and wonder in such a moving and powerful manner. Some of the best moments of the film are just reactions; artists, friends and lovers marvel at what they are witnessing in real-time. Two moments in this regard are just devastating and so moving in their off-ramp exits away from loved ones. One, Norton’s Seeger beholding the exact moment when he knows Dylan has not only surpassed him but realizes he is witnessing history and a phenomenon being born before his eyes. The other is heart-wrenching; Elle Fanning’s Sylvie experiencing Dylan being forever lost to her, watching him perform a song so potent, she weeps knowing he’s lifted off the planet of mere mortals and will never be truly hers (Let’s stress this: Fanning is f*cking phenomenal in this movie). Mangold’s powers of cinema are just at the highest level in these breathtaking moments.
Some audiences will tell you “A Complete Unknown” and Dylan’s motivations are opaque and unclear, but this is utter nonsense: Mangold spells it out for the viewer paying attention, but never, ever dares to spoon-feed it to you. Again, many of the best moments in the film are just silent, non-dialogue looks or reactions; actors communicate everything with their somber faces.
In so few words, in so many crucial musical moments, Mangold’s incadescent film communicates restless drive and that open-road, wind-in-road desire to break all shackles, to be left alone and to blaze your own trails, everyone and everything be damned, and Dylan’s courageous bold choice is a moving, spirited feeling felt through nearly every frame.
A movie could be made of every four-to-six years of Dylan’s life, post-motorcycle accident, his conversion to Christianity, the radical “North Country Fair” style of singing, woodshedding with Robbie Robertson and The Band (The Nighthawks) and so much more. But Mangold has crafted the definitive portrait of this era and the poetic, aspiring, rebellious kid who refused to be pigeonholed, held down and defined. [A]
“A Complete Unknown” opens in theaters on Christmas Day via Searchlight Pictures.