Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: James Mangold
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler,
Scoot McNairy
Following the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (co-written with former music critic Jay Cocks) is the
second Bob Dylan-centred movie to take its title from the
singer-songwriter's 1965 hit 'Like a Rolling Stone'. It's a title that
proves apt, as A Complete Unknown does little to get to the heart of who Dylan is, or was in the
1961-65 period the film's narrative spans. Debates will be had over
whether that's a feature or a flaw, whether the filmmakers have been smart
enough to realise you can't add flesh to an enigma or they've simply
failed to portray Dylan as a human rather than a legend.
Skipping any backstory, the movie opens with Dylan arriving in new York
in 1961 with a guitar over one shoulder and a rucksack full of piss and
vinegar over the other. Fans will know he came from Minnesota, but here he
might as well have come from another planet like Bowie's man who fell to
earth. As played by the angular Timothée Chalamet, he has an ethereal quality, small and wiry, a
handsome troll. Dylan is in New York on a mission, and his first port of
call is the hospital that houses the bedridden folk music legend Woody
Guthrie (Scoot McNairy stepping into the role made famous by
David Carradine in Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory). Dylan hopes to "catch a spark" from Guthrie, but his fortune proves
less mystical and more practical when his song writing impresses
Guthrie's friend and fellow folk icon Pete Seeger (Edward Norton,
playing Seeger as though he's impersonating Tom Hanks' portrayal of Mr Rogers). Seeger invites Dylan into his home and nurtures his talent, an
unwitting Frankenstein creating a monster that will eventually make him
irrelevant.
The core of A Complete Unknown revolves around Dylan's fraught relationships with two women. At
a club in Greenwich Village he wins over rising folk star Joan Baez (Monica Barbero), who recognises his music as "that sound she's been looking for," to
paraphrase Back to the Future. Baez falls for Dylan but there's a suggestion that it's also a
relationship of convenience for both parties: Dylan needs Baez as an
entry point to the folk scene while Baez needs Dylan to take her to the
next level. Barbero gives the film's best performance: as the camera
often lingers on her gaze we see mixed emotions run across Baez's face
as she falls for Dylan's words while clearly worrying that he's set to
supersede her. She also has quite the set of pipes, delivering the
film's best musical moments whenever we witness Baez knock out a
tune.
The other woman is Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a fictionalised
version of Suze Rotolo, an artist now ingrained in pop culture as the
woman who accompanies Dylan on the cover of his 1963 album 'The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Compared to the knowing/cynical Baez, Fanning's
Russo is an innocent who initially can't see that her relationship is
doomed by Dylan's self-serving ways.
A Complete Unknown works on two levels. On a wider level it shows us how Dylan's
music made a troubled world a slightly better place. It reminds us of
how entwined the music of the era was to the 1960s, of how a tune can
instantly conjure images of the Kennedy assassination or of napalm
scarred Vietnamese children or a man walking on the moon. And it's an
indictment of our gutless modern pop landscape, where artists are too
terrified of upsetting their fans to address our current turmoil. Dylan
couldn't care less about his fans, which leads to the film's dramatic
finale at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when after plugging into the
spirit of a generation, Dylan will now literally go electric. The film's
portrayal of this event seems based more on the outrageously hostile
reception to his subsequent UK tour than on Newport itself, where the
audience wasn't quite as angered by Dylan's new musical direction.
On another level the film is a tragedy of how people who get too close
to a supernova end up getting burned. By the film's end Dylan is a
superstar while those who helped him along the way have been left
scorched by living in his orbit. Perhaps what's most striking about
Mangold's film is how it commendably has no interest in whitewashing
Dylan. He's a little jerk at the start of the movie and a massive jerk
by its end. But while the film makes clear the pain and suffering he
caused others, we're left to wonder how much hurt Dylan caused himself.
Chalamet's portrayal is magnetic but the script never lets him be
anything more than a mumbling enigma. Thankfully we have Dylan's songs
to fill in the blanks, performed in a surprisingly convincing manner
here by Chalamet. It's no surprise that the film's most emotional
moments are those that see Dylan pick up a guitar (acoustic or
electric); that's when we really get to see who Dylan is, a gifted
artist whose work has given successive generations temporary shelter
from the storms of their day.
A Complete Unknown is in
UK/ROI cinemas from January 17th.
