A rightful doubt settles in before A Complete Unknown. Has Timothée Chalamet got what it takes? Has any actor, really? The abstract is popular when tackling Bob Dylan. A direct route into his thoughts, his art, and his person, is volatile. How do you adapt the greatest songwriter to film? That is not hyperbole. It is not opinion. If Hunter thought his book good enough to dedicate it to a song, not the man, but a song, then we can rest easy in the assurance of Bob Dylan as the greatest writer to walk the earth. But there is much dismantling to be done through A Complete Unknown, a film which does not fixate on but highlights the infidelities, the dissatisfaction, and the restlessness. It is those who got him there, among other things, but director James Mangold makes a claim for chaos as a catalyst for creativity. All the greats are going. Sometimes we need a reminder of who they were before they became what they wanted.
Take every step with a grain of salt. There is a lie in the script of A Complete Unknown, and that is the beauty of it. Too many hardened listeners will want the hard facts, the deeper meanings to all those songs that see them worship the ground a man has walked across. He is special artistically, but the screeches and squeals of those wanting to press the flesh with Dylan, as portrayed in the film, are sickening. Hanger-ons and needy fans wanting a glimpse of the great man, and to say what? That his art is out of this world, it is, in bulk, flawless? Dylan is an isolated spirit not because he is a loner, as Mangold hints at, but because the burden of fame is something to escape, as Dylan so often does as Mangold finds a fondness for wide shots of Chalamet driving off into the horizon. Never interesting when in the middle, which is where it often lay for Dylan’s vehicular motions. But the man, as Mangold and Chalamet so totally consider, is as susceptible to trouble and doubt as the rest of us, his are just magnified because of his fame. A Complete Unknown is respectful of the relationships, of the songwriting, but it owes nothing to the intricacies of Dylan’s personal life.
What begins as a plucky film where the songwriter finds himself in the right place, at the right time, evolves into an artist realising he is not satisfied with his situation. Dylan may not have known what was to come, but the mystified status, the presentation of him as a man with a degree of separation from the social norms, is here dedicated to a workaholism and expectation carried by himself. It is why the crushing back-and-forth between Chalamet and Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez works so well, why the pop-up appearances of Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) feel like comical breaks with life lessons woven in. A Complete Unknown is a sharply written piece which will, like any good music biopic, have you clamouring for songs of the time.
Mangold portrays Dylan as unsatisfied. Whether that is with his social life, his relationships or the direction of his sound. It is a fascinating theory to unpack, and A Complete Unknown works hard to drag this understanding into the spotlight. For the newcomer and for the seasoned Dylan listener, those who have read up on the life and works of the man, and for those who are sick of hearing it boom out the speakers downstairs, there is a platter serving all in A Complete Unknown. Be it the details of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) reluctantly passing the torch or the knowing fear and evolution of Dylan’s relationship with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), it all comes from a place of identifying the man, not the mirage.
Much of this comes from Chalamet, a solid performance where the mannerisms and interactions are nailed. He presents a frustrated songwriter who, now he has his break, desires another. He comes across as unlikeable at times, his final encounter in the film with Russo a gut-punch forgotten under the world-changing noise he made for years to come. There is a dedication here from Chalamet which serves the film well, but it is not some world-beating performance. He is boxed in by the restrictions of Mangold and his straight-shooting biopic style. A Newport Folk Festival performance turned electric, before being egged on for an acoustic number, is just the Bohemian Rhapsody walk through the Live Aid set. Adapting a show which already exists is not a biopic, it is mimicry.
And yet why mimic what Mangold admits we have no chance of understanding? A Complete Unknown stands as a film wanting to detail the rise and rise of Dylan as an artist, but also get to grips with him as a person. Scenes with a frustrated Baez in a hotel room or an equally enraged Russo get close, but in defining these moments, in giving the outline half-filled, we lose the abstract, the take-home chance to evolve it in our minds. If there is a lie slipped in somewhere through here, some little fib to keep an audience on their toes, then narratively it would need to be looser than it is. A Complete Unknown was never going to break the mould of biopic storytelling, Todd Haynes already did that with I’m Not There, a different beast entirely.
But what it had the chance to do was chart a time in music history which has been explained and exploited to death by writers and critics who now see Dylan as a prophet. His fans see him as such. The world views Dylan not as a man but as a beast of creativity, a spinning plate. Deconstructing that takes more than two hours, but Chalamet and the ensemble prove, above all, enjoyable. There is a sincerity found within which wants to highlight the ease of songwriting Dylan once had. Just when it reaches a spot where it could be argued it is more about the music than the man, another fresh drama happens, some inevitable spat to keep a dramatic core from burning out. What, really then, does A Complete Unknown offer? It offers some spirited adaptation of Bob Dylan, a weighty task to begin with. Chalamet has the little tics and twists down to a tee, but like Walk the Line and Ford v. Ferrari, great films as they are, they can only come close to an impression. Dylan once asked “How does it feel?” and while no answer was needed, Mangold seems determined to find one. God guide him.
