By George & Josh Bate
Biopics about famous musicians have seen a resurgence in recent years. Bohemian Rhapsody, depicting the life of Queen superstar Freddie Mercury, took the world by storm in 2018. A year later Elton John’s life and musical career were the focus in Rocketman. Austin Butler earned widespread acclaim for his role as Elvis Presley in the Baz Luhrmann directed film in 2022, the same year that Naomi Ackie played Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody. 2024 has already seen the release of biopics about Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse, and Robbie Williams. But most eyes are on A Complete Unknown, a biopic of who is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time – Bob Dylan.
From director and co-writer James Mangold, A Complete Unknown spans four integral years in the life of Bob Dylan, played by Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet. The film begins in 1961 as Dylan moves to New York City to start a career in folk music, and culminates in 1965 after a controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival. In between those years, the film tracks Dylan’s romantic relationship with Sylvie Russo (played by Elle Fanning), mentorship from legendary folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton), friendships with fellow musicians Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro) and Johnny Cash (played by Boyd Holbrook), and his quickly skyrocketing career.
There’s a moment in the first act of A Complete Unknown in which Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie remarks that she doesn’t know her boyfriend. She spends time with him, lives with him, and watches him play and write music, but she doesn’t really know who he is – what his background is, what drives him, how he’s feeling, what he stands for. In an unfortunate parallel to watching A Complete Unknown, Sylvie’s remark about Bob Dylan resonates all too strongly for the entirety of the film.
A Complete Unknown features Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in nearly every frame and spends a massive junk of its 2 hour 21 minute runtime showing Chalamet sing eerily like the famous artist he is portraying, and yet never moves beyond on a superficial understanding of Bob Dylan. Audience members who bring their sentiments of Dylan and the era in which the film is set to the viewing experience and project these sentiments onto the film will get more mileage out of A Complete Unknown, likely connecting with its central character and broader environment in a deeper manner. But without such projection of one’s prior sentiments toward Dylan and the era (which is unfair to expect from an audience), Mangold’s film proves to be flat, soulless, and uninformative.
Never are we able to glean what makes Dylan tick, what motivates him both in his music career and relationships, nor why he remains one of the most groundbreaking and influential musicians of all time. This latter point is particularly egregious in that A Complete Unknown does a disservice to the impact of Dylan, not only on the folk music world, but on broader pop culture and social activism. The film may show crowds of people celebrating Dylan’s music, yet it never strikes at the essence of what made Dylan so special. Chalamet walks around playing a guitar and singing for the vast majority of the movie, but we’re never allowed insight into what music means to Dylan and just why he was so revolutionary. What results is a conventional biopic, perhaps one of the most conventional biopics about a famous musician in recent years. And conventional is not a word we should be associating with Bob Dylan.
This comes as a surprise as James Mangold is no stranger to music biopics, having helmed the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line almost 20 years ago. Whereas Walk the Line managed to peel back the layers of Cash and offer insight into the famous musician’s innerworkings, A Complete Unknown opts for a far more surface-level depiction of its star.
And, given such a surface-level depiction of Dylan, star Timothée Chalamet is prevented from delivering a performance that is anything more than a glorified impression of the artist. Make no mistake, Chalamet is excellent given the material he is given – he captures Dylan’s mannerisms, physicality, and voice with uncanny accuracy. And, in a much better and deeper film, could possibly have been a shoo-in for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Unfortunately, though, the film never gives Chalamet opportunities to act beyond giving an impression of Bob Dylan and, as such, squanders the possibility of another stellar performance in the young actor’s career.
Among the supporting cast, A Complete Unknown finally manages to elicit stronger emotions. The film begins with Dylan making his way to New York City and visiting his idol Woody Guthrie (played by Scoot McNairy) in the hospital. Accompanying Woody is Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton), and together the three musicians gather for what ends up being the film’s best scene. It’s a touching moment as the ill Guthrie and his warm friend Seeger brighten up upon hearing Dylan’s music for the first time. From then on out, Norton’s Pete Seeger is the sole spot of warmth and emotion in Mangold’s film. Norton plays Seeger excellently, with a heart and humanity that matches Seeger’s real life accomplishments as a social activist. In some ways, Norton’s Seeger is so strong compared to the rest of the cast and characters that it makes one yearn for the film to focus more so on Seeger, but doing so would make it more of a biopic about Seeger than about Dylan.
VERDICT: 4/10
The latest in the long string of recent biopics about famous musical artists, A Complete Unknown disappoints by providing little beyond a superficial understanding of the legendary Bob Dylan. James Mangold’s film spends great time with Dylan performing and interacting with other famous musicians of the era, but it never truly gets into what makes Dylan tick, what motivates him both in his music career and relationships, and why he remains one of the most important and influential musicians of all time. This latter point is particularly egregious as it means A Complete Unknown does a disservice to Bob Dylan and means the film is best characterized as conventional, a word that should never be associated with Dylan. The lack of depth given to Dylan means that star Timothée Chalamet is restricted to delivering a performance that isn’t much beyond a glorified impression of the artist, although Chalamet captures Dylan’s physicality, mannerisms, and voice with uncanny accuracy. Greater success is found in the film’s supporting cast, in particular Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, who injects the biopic with much needed warmth and emotion. Early in the film, Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie (played by Elle Fanning) remarks that she doesn’t truly know who Dylan is. And, unfortunately, neither does the audience by the end of the movie. As a result, A Complete Unknown begins and ends as a story about a man who, by and large, remains a complete unknown to the audience.