James Mangold has done it again with the new Bob Dylan biopic as A Complete Unknown is one of the best pictures of the year.

Mangold is no stranger to the music biopic, having been behind the helm of the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. It drew some controversy for the film’s portrayal of Johnny’s first wife, Vivian. However, Mangold has another contender on his hands as the filmmaker revisits the early 1960s.

When a 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) hitchhiked to New York in 1961, nobody could have predicted what was about to transpire. He had come from Minnesota to Greenwich Village, where he sought out a visit with the great folk singer Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) takes him under his wings. Dylan forms numerous relationships. He hits it off with an activist, Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning). Musically, Dylan hits it off with Joan Boaz (Monica Barbaro) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holdbrook). He was well on his way into becoming the voice of a generation. But even as he generated hit after hit, he was still finding his musical identity. It turns out that he would need to bring on electric instruments in order to do so. Newport Folk Festival fans were not so pleased with his evolution and it showed during his performance in July 1965.

This film is a narrow view into Bob Dylan’s life. You’re not getting a career-spanning documentary. There are plenty of Bob Dylan documentaries, including Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Murray Lerner’s The Other Side of the Mirror. It’s on my list to watch as soon as I take an awards season breather. People can take away what they want but I really enjoyed it. When it comes to music, I’m the biggest fan of the 60s and 70s. Even though it was a tumultuous time in the US, musicians were making magic at the recording studio and on the stage.

A Complete Unknown runs 2 hours, 20 minutes and earns every minute of its run time. Film editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris told me that the rough assembly cut was just north of three hours before condensing songs and tightening up other scenes. Hey, I’d have watched the longer film just to hear the music! The film is gorgeously shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and the sound team should be commended by the wonderful job they did.

Timothée Chalamet goes above and beyond in his performance. He is both singing and playing guitar live in the film. I’ve had a number of conversations with some of the below-the-line crew members and they all praised Chalamet’s performance. While there were some plans for Chalamet to sing from playback, he insisted that no, he would sing live. Except for 2% of the film in which they are singing from playback, everyone is singing live in front of the camera. To say that Chalamet’s performance is absolutely stupendous, astonishing, etc. is not an understatement. This is truly one of the best acting performances of the year. He completely disappears into the role. It’s as if we are getting a chance to relive this historic moment from the 1960s.

I talk a lot about Chalamet here but this isn’t to ignore everyone else in the film, even though Dylan is a big part of the film! The film really dives into the mentorship role that Seeger plays to the younger Dylan. It doesn’t feel like Edward Norton disappears into the role of Seeger, at least not in the same way. Almost as soon as Dylan meets Seeger in the film, he’s introduced to folk music’s IT girl of the 1960s: Joan Baez. Monica Barbaro easily holds her own against Chalamet and delivers an award-worthy performance of her own. Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo disappears for large moments at a time. As for Boyd Holdbrook, it’s been many years since watching Walk the Line to compare with Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. I half expected Mangold to utilize the Indiana Jones de-aging technology and have Phoenix reprise the role of Johnny Cash.

I was unfamiliar with Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties going into the November press screening. However, I decided to read it after the screening so as to become more familiar with the store. Also, I wanted to see where the film sticks to fact verses fiction. Suffice it to say, the film certainly does a good job. Anyway, it’s fascinating to read the myths that have come out of what happened on July 25, 1965. People have their own recollections of the night’s events–some true, some not so true. Did Pete Seeger actually use an ax? As they say, when myth becomes legend, print the legend. Anyway, Mangold is the owner of a script personally annotated with notes by Bob Dylan. Dylan giving both the script and Chalamet’s performance his blessing is more than enough for me.

Though to be fair, as of December 9, I’m about tw0-thirds of the way through the book. There is no denying just how much The Beatles had an impact on the world of pop-folk music and especially on Bob Dylan. Interestingly enough, some of their earlier tunes drew on America’s Tin Pan Alley with the AABA form. “Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid,” Dylan is quoted on page 174.

As the British Invasion continued into the 60s, bands like The Rolling Stones and The Animals turned towards the blues origins of rock and roll. As much as people loved folk music at the time, rock was here to stay by the mid-60s. You cannot fault Dylan for choosing to go the electric route. Dylan opened up an interview with the Los Angeles Free Press about the music trends at the time:

“Folk music destroyed itself. Nobody destroyed it. Folk music is still here, if you want to dig it. It’s not that it’s going in or out. It’s all the soft mellow shit, man, that’s just being replaced by something that people know there is now.”

The quote can be found on page 183. In the expanded answer, Dylan discusses having tried rock and roll in the 1950s but there were too many groups. But anyway, by late 1964, Dylan’s producer, Tom Wilson (Eric Berryman), had the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Animals on his mind. Wilson had already been impressed by Dylan’s lyrics and blues. By December 1964, Wilson and Dylan experimented with some of the musician’s previous work by adding an electric accompaniment on select songs. Nothing was releasable but Dylan would have an electric band backing up when he returned to the studio in January 1965. You could see everything was coming to a climax by the time Dylan stepped foot on stage at the Newport Folk Festival. It was already there with his March 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home.

Wald makes a point with where the climate was during the mid-1960s in the middle of page 189:

“The problem was not simply electricity; it was a broader confluence of conflicts; pop music versus roots music, commercial confections versus communal creations, escapism versus social involvement.”

This point in time was, simply put, bigger than Bob Dylan. Pop-folk music as a whole was changing as more made the transition to folk-rock. But even then, one can look to the British Invasion for doing a few things. One, The Beatles helped the nation when they arrived on tour a few months after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Two, bands honoring rock and roll’s blues origins essentially said it was okay to play electric rather than acoustic. Where does Bob Dylan fit into all of this? Well, he went onto become the voice of a generation.

A Complete Unknown is firing on all cylinders–Timothée Chalamet turns in a mesmerizing performance as he disappears into his performance as Bob Dylan.

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
SCREENWRITERS: James Mangold and Jay Cocks
CAST: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Eriko Hatsune, Big Bill Morganfield, Will Harrison, and Scoot McNairy

Searchlight Pictures will release A Complete Unknown in theaters on December 25, 2024. Grade: 5/5

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