Content warning: This piece contains spoilers for “A Complete Unknown.”
Folk legend Bob Dylan is once again turning heads following the release of “A Complete Unknown,” a biopic about the early days of his long and immensely successful career starring Timothée Chalamet. What should have been a fascinating retelling of an already beloved story was a frustratingly truncated and uninspired train wreck instead. Perhaps if writer/director James Mangold had focused more on developing his characters well and crafting a captivating narrative than he was on shoving as many classic songs as the budget would allow into a trite, cookie-cutter biopic, this film wouldn’t have felt like a slap in the face to one of the greatest musicians of all time.
“A Complete Unknown” attempts to tell the story of Dylan’s rise to fame—from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to his infamous electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. At least, it kind of does. The film follows Dylan as he meets fellow musician Woody Guthrie, falls in love with Suze Rotolo (whose name was changed to “Sylvie” in the film), releases an unsuccessful first studio album full of covers, and then releases a wildly successful second studio album of originals which launches him to stardom, ending with him picking up an electric guitar and getting booed hard at the Newport Folk Festival. This loose outline of Dylan’s early career is where the accuracy of this film ends.
Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan is abysmal at best and utterly disrespectful to a music legend at worst. His performance is uncharacteristically flat and overwhelmingly disappointing. In most of his other films, he’s a scene stealer—he waltzes onto set and consistently knocks it out of the park. In this one, he’s upstaged by almost all of his co-stars. In particular, Monica Barbaro and Boyd Holbrook deliver exceptional and captivating performances as Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, respectively. Unfortunately, everything good about their performances was overshadowed by everything bad about Chalamet’s.
Beloved Dylan classics such as “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Girl From The North Country” are sung by Chalamet with the conviction of a child being forced to perform in front of his parents’ friends at a dinner party. It’s heartbreaking to imagine the impression of Dylan this film would leave on a moviegoer unfamiliar with his work. Dylan was inspired, groundbreaking and overflowing with raw talent and unrivaled genius. He exploded onto the scene as a visionary who elevated folk music and brought it into the national spotlight. He sang at the March on Washington, for God’s sake. Chalamet plays Dylan as a mumbling half-wit, completely devoid of any passion, talent or spunk.
Other performances by Elle Fanning and Edward Norton are charming initially but start to grate by the third act. Their portrayals of Suze Rotolo and Pete Seeger, respectively, are thoroughly one-note and a bit cartoonish at times. Even Seeger’s attempted destruction of the sound system at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 falls flat because Mangold’s version of him is both written and performed like Mister Rogers. Seeger is famously quoted as saying, “If I had an axe, I’d cut that cable,” during Dylan’s set, yet watching that scene, it feels out of character for him because of how poorly he’s represented in this film.
Chalamet simply cannot—and did not—pull off playing that beloved early version of Dylan: the green, mysterious wanderer with turned-out pockets who captures everyone’s attention with just a guitar in hand. For the movie’s first half, this is the version of Dylan that Chalamet is trying to emulate–and he fails. Towards the end, though, as Dylan evolves in his life and career, Chalamet’s performance also evolves. Chalamet has better luck with this later Dylan, the jaded, burgeoning rock star who begins to lament the loss of his anonymity. He’s more convincing as Dylan in the film’s second half, sulking around in dark sunglasses with his head lowered and snarking at everyone he meets. It’s still not a good performance, but at least it’s better than the performance in the first half.
You can’t even really call this movie a biopic. It’s a jukebox musical. Each scene feels like its only purpose is to set up the next needle drop, with a whopping 26 Dylan songs crammed haphazardly into two hours and 20 minutes. In true Mangold fashion, most of the movie comprises dramatic slow-zoom shots of people reacting to Dylan’s genius. This genius is merely implied, of course, as the film doesn’t make much effort to show it. In multiple scenes, Chalamet is shown hunching over a notebook, mumbling lines from now-hit songs, still being written. Then—SMASH CUT TO: said hit song being performed on stage in front of a roaring crowd. WE SEE: Some dude in the wings, jaw agape. Rinse, repeat. The screenplay is lazy and underbaked and doesn’t do justice to Dylan or his entourage, almost all of whom are presented as bumbling yes-men who can never seem to wrap their heads around how awesome this guy they’re watching on stage is.
The film’s ending is also quite abrupt. A better stopping point to the story of Dylan’s early career would have been his alleged motorcycle crash that halted his career for a few years or even his world tour in 1966. Instead, the film ends with Chalamet scooting off on his motorcycle immediately after the end of his set at the Newport Folk Festival. It leaves a lot to be desired, and not in a good way. I know what happened to Bob Dylan after he went electric, but not everyone does. For those experiencing his story for the first time via “A Complete Unknown,” the ending (like everything else in this film) misses the mark.
In a Q&A with the director and cast screened after the movie, Mangold said that he wanted to remove Dylan’s “enigmatic” qualities—better yet, he didn’t think Chalamet could even play an enigma. Then why make a movie about Bob Dylan, someone who is known for being offbeat, shifty and really, really weird? Dylan is the enigma. And why cast someone you don’t think could pull that off?
“A Complete Unknown” was not made for Dylan fans. If you want to learn about folk’s poster child, watch Martin Scorcese’s “No Direction Home” or D.A. Pennebaker’s “Don’t Look Back.” Don’t waste your time or money on “A Complete Unknown.”
Rating: 1/5
“A Complete Unknown” releases in theaters worldwide on Dec. 25.
