A Complete Unknown

Four years after breaking out in the folk scene, a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) controversially dares to change his acoustic sound. Also consuming him are his rising fame, intimate relationships, and artistic restlessness.

Tries to go beyond biopic tropes in capturing Bob Dylan's early years. James Mangold's long-gestating Bob Dylan biopic was initially titled Going Electric before borrowing its title from "Like A Rolling Stone." The latter might be better for marketing, but the first title captures the film's essence better. This is no hagiographic epic that plays through the many decades of the harmonica-playing chain smoker. Instead, A Complete Unknown documents the era from a young twenty-something Dylan's sudden rise in the folk scene in 1961 and culminates in his then-controversial choice to play an electric-driven set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, stepping out of the perpetually acoustic shadow of folk. The Times They Are A-Changin' might have political overtones, but the song also represents Dylan's constant urge to reinvent himself. All in all, it's an interesting choice to make this Dylan story less of a biopic and more of a career shift.

Despite the vision, it barely scratches the surface of his enigmatic existence. Somewhere in the middle of A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet's Dylan smokes his hundredth cigarette and whines that he fears being known only for strumming Blowin' in the Wind. It's a valid artistic fear, albeit one that can't sustain the drama for a slogging runtime of 2 hours and 20 minutes. Mangold still deserves some praise for daring to give the biopic treatment to a singer who's as mysterious as he's revered. After all, Bob Dylan intentionally fabricated parts of his memoir and accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature with a speech that ripped off the SparkNotes page on Moby Dick. And while A Complete Unknown grounds itself with only four years in Dylan's life, it still manages to flesh out very little of the man behind the enigma. Timothée Chalamet's Dylan enters the movie (and the folk scene) like a mystical poet from a land afar. To give Chalamet due credit, he delivers an earnest Dylan impression, complete with the mumbling and the singing. But by the end of it all, he remains a one-dimensional caricature. Dylan's mystery is still intact.

A talented ensemble can't save the film's exhausting existence. Sandwiched in between are his friendships with banjo-strumming mentor and old-school folker Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and the cigarette-puffing Man in Black, Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook). And as no fact-based artist story is complete without infidelity, we have Elle Fanning playing a fictionalized version of Dylan's early muse, Suze Rotolo, while Monica Barbaro acts and sings as Dylan's fellow collaborator and occasional love interest Joan Baez. There are hints of an intense love triangle, but sadly, the romantic subplots give way to a cliched "other woman" storyline. As much as it celebrates its hero, A Complete Unknown is self-aware of how overbearing Dylan's self-centered hipster persona can be. But despite its multiple threads, it does come off as much ado about just Dylan's shift in sound. Yes, the folk scene was indeed shaken in 1965 when Dylan shifted to electric guitars and younger, more diverse backing bands. Calls of "Judas" and boycott movements followed. But more than half a decade later, the folk scene fuss hardly warrants an overlong biopic. A Complete Unknown might satisfy hardcore Dylan nerds, but for the rest, it lacks the entertainment value of James Mangold's far superior Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Much like its subject, the film remains cold-hearted and emotionally distant.