Since 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, everyone and their nan has featured in a music biopic. Elton? Yeah. Elvis? Why not. Your mate down Cosy Joes singing “Wonderwall”? Awaiting release at the next Venice Film Festival. So, when rumours spread that Dylan’s story would be adapted for the silver screen, fans were justifiably apprehensive. Was A Complete Unknown going to be a gold standard for the biopic genre, or 2h20m of terrible impressions and awful harmonica playing? Having made my pilgrimage to The Gate Cineworld, I can safely mark it down as the former.
Timothee Chalamet will certainly capture the headlines and hinge prompts, but his performance is amplified by a brilliant supporting cast. Indeed, the biopic would be nothing without Edward Norton (Pete Seeger), Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), and Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash). Norton in particular steals the show – just picture The Narrator from Fight Club (1999) as a mild-mannered folk musician.
The film isn’t afraid to portray Bobby as “kind of an asshole”, (not my words, but the movie version of Joan Baez’s). It’s no worship piece, and this creates an interesting debate surrounding the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Was Dylan’s decision to play an electric, rocky set an act of artistic genius or the selfish betrayal of the folk community? Through its excellent portrayal of both Dylan and Seeger, A Complete Unknown lets you decide.
A good range of Dylan’s early discography, as well as music by Seeger, Baez and Cash, is covered faithfully throughout. Unlike 90% of actors, Chalamet doesn’t overdo Bob’s signature accent, immediately easing fears and winning hearts. Special mention has to go to Monica Barbaro, who despite having never played guitar before being cast produces the best vocal performance of the movie.
Timothee Chalamet will certainly capture the headlines and hinge prompts, but his performance is amplified by a brilliant supporting cast.
Of course, with every biographical film the director often takes some creative liberty in the stories they choose to tell. As someone who knows a lot about Bob Dylan some scenes were admittedly hard to watch. Saying that however, of all biopics to lay focus on, if you choose Bob Dylan there is always going to be some inaccuracies. Dylan has been making up his past for decades. He shared faked details of his life with radio host, Cynthia Gooding on ‘Folksinger’s Choice’ (1962) saying he had worked at a carnival as a ‘clean up boy’ from the age of 13. Not to mention Dylan’s infamous 2004 Chronicles, Volume One, a supposed autobiography that is packed with various assertions and pushing the truth.
A Complete Unknown is loosely centred on Elijah Wald’s similarly named book and attempts to pack in as many details from these four infamous years (1961-1965) of Dylan’s career. There are just a few inaccurate details, some so minor only the top Dylan fans would point to and some exceedingly obvious that viewers were left confused.
One of the first opening scenes I was left thinking, ‘did this happen… I’m not so sure’ and that was Dylan’s meeting with Woody Guthrie in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. It’s no argument Dylan has been a large supporter of Guthrie. With his ‘Song for Woody’ and his passage from Chronicles where he claims, ‘the songs of Woody Guthrie ruled [his] universe’. However, Dylan didn’t meet Guthrie there in the hospital but contacted his family home in Queens and met him in East Orange, New Jersey. In the same scene, Dylan supposedly meets Pete Seeger (played by Ed Norton). The two met in Greenwich Village after he’d been told of Dylan’s music. He sat down in Hootenanny in Carnegie Hall and heard ‘A Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’.
I can only appreciate a Dylan biopic that screams Dylanesque qualities within and throughout.
The more obvious ones are of course, Sylvie Russo (played by Elle Fanning) was a recreation of Suze Rotolo, the infamous girlfriend on the face of A Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Russo’s character inhabits all Rotolo’s qualities, and we see some events being retold from her book A Freewheelin Time. I stepped out of my second viewing of the film to hear an elderly woman shout in disbelief of Rotolo’s replacement thinking it was down to purely creative freedom. The issue risen with Fanning’s character was a request from Dylan himself. He wished that Suze’s name be changed to protect her privacy as she was always a private person in her relationship with him and his career. With her passing in 2011 it seemed even more appropriate to keep her life private.
There are many other events that were pushed slightly in the film. If you have the time, I recommend having a look at which scenes were changed for the Hollywood level explorations. Joan Baez for example, did meet Dylan at Gerde’s Folk City but, but as she told Rolling Stone 1983, she saw him with her boyfriend at the time on recommendation, like Seeger. As a, perhaps, Dylan fanatic I did spend most of my time mentally noting all that was inaccurate with the film. But, as I said before, what is more Dylan than some explicitly wishy-washy scene portrayals and a pushing of the truth? James Mangold took Dylan’s suggestive declarations through his career and ran with it, and I can only appreciate a Dylan biopic that screams Dylanesque qualities within and throughout.
This film is decidedly brilliant. I will go back & see it again which is something I would not normally do.
Congratulations to Timothee Chalamet for doing all the music,guitar work & singing .Just Brilliant
Loved it. Have seen it six times!!