Cinema from the Spectrum

It’s almost impossible to create a proper biopic about an artist as endlessly fascinating as Bob Dylan. So it only fits that when Todd Haynes made I’m Not There. in 2007, it was less a straightforward biopic about Dylan and a fractured portrait of the many personalities that make up Bob Dylan’s mind: because he’s already created his own mythos through the elusive meanings of his own songs but also how they speak to what’s going on in the United States at the time. It seems that Mangold would be aware of such a challenge as he’s ultimately making a biopic about Bob Dylan on the more conventional side. It just so happens that he’s not deterred by it either, creating an entertaining film around that mystery which Dylan himself presents – even if it’s not always representative of Dylan the artist.

Rather than being a reflection of Dylan’s entire career, A Complete Unknown focuses on a key period of Dylan’s own fame – from the moment when he first meets Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) to the controversial point in his career in which he employed electronic instruments for Highway 61 Revisited (whose starting song, “Like a Rolling Stone” is alluded to in the film’s title). Portraying Bob Dylan is Timothée Chalamet, who transforms himself into the famed singer-songwriter at the peak of his youth. With the conscious choice to focus on a key period in Dylan’s early fame, it just so happens that James Mangold also runs into another challenge: just simply capturing what it is that made Bob Dylan into an often mythologized figure within the American folk scene as he grew more famous across the globe.

The choice to focus on Bob Dylan’s own career prior to his “going electric” ends up becoming something that works in favour of A Complete Unknown, primarily because it’s the most fascinating period of Dylan’s music career but also the most transformative era too. It also helps with streamlining the focus of James Mangold’s portrait of Bob Dylan so that we can get an idea of how he became the almost mythic figure in folk music that people recognize him to be nowadays. But most of all, it’s the point in which Dylan’s persona had been born, so this could be the closest that one can get to a comprehensive biopic about the mythic status that only Dylan can build for himself.

James Mangold and Jay Cocks do not hold back with regards to their portrait of Bob Dylan in here. Dylan is a very brash, rude, selfish, and pompous artist who felt that he was not being truly listened to – and as such he treats people around him very poorly, whether they be his romantic partners or even other musicians trying to get a sense of where his genius comes forth. But it also gives Timothée Chalamet more room to transform himself into a figure that one can’t really pin down too. Not just in how Chalamet manages to recreate the singing voice of Bob Dylan so seamlessly, but in how he matches the same attitude and even mastered playing the guitar and harmonica just as Dylan had done through the years. He’s not the only performer in the movie to do such, for Monica Barbaro also sings when portraying Joan Baez; even at times usurping Chalamet to outstanding degrees.

From there onward though, are where the most frustrating aspects of A Complete Unknown arise. Like James Mangold’s previous musician biopic Walk the Line which brought to the screen the life of Johnny Cash, A Complete Unknown hits all the same notes you would be expecting. It’s a condensation of the peak period of Bob Dylan’s creative highs so as to make everything seem digestible for casual Dylan fans. There’s no new observations made, especially after a candid portrait of Dylan behind the scenes can be found in the D. A. Pennebaker documentary Dont Look Back. But even in its attempts to paint a picture of an artist who made his own myths, it seems like Mangold buys into that same illusion to his own fault too – the end result is far more simplistic than Dylan is.

To his credit though, James Mangold is doing everything he can to make this entertaining enough so as to introduce newer listeners to Bob Dylan. When he’s shooting Dylan performing for the crowd, or in a studio, it always feels as if we’re in the same space to witness something great about to happen. Which might just as well be what adds to the mythos that surrounded Dylan himself, let alone how his songs went and influenced more than just the folk scene and the realms of popular music as we know it. It’s nothing remarkable, but it always feels like we’re being treated to a concert, which only keeps everything all the more fun for casual Dylan fans.

Yet with the endless biographies that have been written about Bob Dylan and even documentary films that have really given people a sense of the elusive artist for so long, A Complete Unknown opting for the same hits just doesn’t feel like enough. It’s not enough because we know there’s a whole lot more within the mind of a much-mythologized artist like Dylan, especially given his own views of the folk scene at the time of his going electric. Mangold’s obviously doing much of this out of love for Dylan the musician, but it’s also what holds him back from giving us a sense of Dylan on the inside. It’s fun in the moment, yet it can’t be helped but felt as if there are crucial pieces to this puzzle missing.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Searchlight Pictures.

Directed by James Mangold
Screenplay by James Mangold, Jay Cocks, based on the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald
Produced by Peter Jaysen, James Mangold, Alex Heineman, Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Jeff Rosen, Timothée Chalamet, Fred Berger
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, Dan Fogler, Will Harrison, Norbert Leo Butz, Eriko Hatsune, P. J. Byrne
Premiere Date: December 10, 2024
Running Time: 140 minutes