Too many musical biopics try to cover a large part of an artist’s life, but in “A Complete Unknown,” director/co-writer James Mangold wisely focuses on five years at the beginning of Bob Dylan’s career. He also cast performers who not only capture the essence of their characters, but do a great job singing and playing.
The movie begins when Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives in New York in 1961, hoping to meet his folk-singing hero, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). Learning that Guthrie’s in a hospital in New Jersey (suffering from Huntington’s Disease), Dylan goes to find him. When he gets to Guthrie’s hospital room, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) — another folk music legend and close friend of Guthrie’s — is there. After chatting for a few minutes, Guthrie insists Dylan play a song for him, and the result impresses both of the older guys tremendously.
From that point on, Seeger, who wielded enormous influence in the folk music world, takes Dylan under his wing and helps him get his start in coffeehouses and clubs in Greenwich Village like Gerde’s Folk City. He’s discovered there by John Hammond, an executive at Columbia Records, who signs him to the label and sets up his first recording sessions. The rest of “A Complete Unknown” follows Dylan as his popularity rises and his songwriting matures.
Along the way, he meets Sylvie (Elle Fanning), who falls for him and lets him move in with her (in real life, Dylan was known for couch-surfing at various people’s apartments because he didn’t have his own). He also falls into a relationship — both personal and professional — with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), who was already a star. In fact, her recordings of some of Dylan’s songs in that era brought him even more acclaim.
I was happy to see that Mangold did not use “A Complete Unknown” to take the edge off Dylan’s arrogance. He never develops any closeness with the women in his life or his growing fan base. In concert, he rarely acknowledges the audience or speaks to them between songs. He’s not interested in playing songs of his that are popular, opting instead for new material or non-hits.
That’s what leads to the climax, Dylan’s infamous 1965 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. He had played there the year before in an acoustic set which earned a large ovation, but by ’65 he had gone electric, with a full band behind him which included Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Paul Butterfield. Electric guitars were something of a no-no at Newport, although some blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf drew no scorn when they played. But Dylan plugging in was something different, because he was viewed by Seeger and others as the great new voice of folk, and as such, the music and words mattered to them more than the volume.
Now, about the performances. Chalamet is excellent as Dylan, in both the dramatic sequences and those where he sings and plays. It only takes a minute for Chalamet’s movie star image to disappear and his portrayal of Dylan to shine through. Barbaro is terrific as Joan Baez, whose songs she performs beautifully.
As good as they are, Norton is even better as Seeger. He replicates Pete’s voice, cadence, and demeanor perfectly. I don’t know if he knew how to play five-string banjo before making “A Complete Unknown,” but he has it down perfectly. I won’t be surprised if Norton is nominated for an Oscar for his performance. And yes, all three actors actually play and sing in the movie — as Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix did in Mangold’s movie about Johnny Cash, “Walk The Line.”
Still, I wonder if “A Complete Unknown” will find an audience anywhere near the scale of the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which I reviewed here). That movie had a charismatic lead character the audience could root for and the spectacular “Live Aid” sequence towards the end. Moreover, while the songs in “A Complete Unknown” are great (e.g. “Don’t Think Twice,” “Blowing In the Wind,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “The Times They Are A-Changing”), I don’t think they’re as widely popular with people under fifty years old.
I like those tunes and most of Dylan’s output through the sixties and seventies, much of which I played throughout the music radio half of my radio career, although I lost interest in him when he embraced born again Christianity with the “Slow Train Coming” album in 1979. Still, I know plenty of people, including my wife, who can’t stand any of his work and thus have no interest in seeing a movie about the man whose voice they find repulsive.
That’s too bad, because “A Complete Unknown” is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, with a rating of 9.5 out of 10.
It almost makes me willing to forgive Mangold for last year’s dreadful “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (which I reviewed here).
Opens Christmas Day in theaters.