"A Complete Unknown" Bob Dylan Biopic
dir by James Mangold
“A Complete Unknown” directed by James Mangold (who, interestingly enough, most recently directed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) reaches its apotheosis at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when Dylan plays “Like A Rolling Stone”[1] with an electric guitar – the lyrics “a complete unknown,” that serve as the official title of the biopic, come from this song:
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
In a lot of ways, it is these lyrics and this song, from Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited that encapsulate the film’s story of the early years of Dylan’s artistic evolution as a musical pioneer, and too, the way he emerged in the music scene in Greenwich village quite mysteriously. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, where he became fascinated by beat poetry and folksinger Woody Guthrie. Dylan began performing folk music in coffeehouses, adopting the last name Dylan (after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas).[2] When renowned singer Woody Guthrie (“This Land is Your Land”) fell ill with Huntington’s disease, Dylan traveled to New Jersey where Guthrie was in the hospital to meet him and also to play a song for him that he composed, “Song to Woody.”[3] The reenactment of this scene in the film is moving. Bob Dylan is played by Timothée Chalamet, who prepared off and on for five years for the role. The most exceptional part of his performance is the way he captured Dylan’s voice – he worked with a vocal coach extensively.
When Dylan came into prominence in the New York City music scene not long after this visit with Guthrie, he seemed to many people, including his girlfriend at the time Suze Rotolo (played by Elle Fanning in the film, though the name of the real-life figure has been changed to Sylvie Russo in the film) to be very enigmatic. This cryptic aspect of Dylan’s bearing was very unsettling to his girlfriend who refers to him as the “mysterious minstrel” in the film. In the Rolling Stone December 2024 cover story “How Timothée Chalamet ‘Pushed the Bounds’ to Play Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown’”[4] Brian Hiatt writes of the little interest Dylan takes in literal historical truth and about his “obvious pleasure in obfuscation and distortion.” Apparently while Dylan was working with Scorsese on 2019’s Rolling Thunder Revue, another recent film that honors his life and work, he was adamant about lacing an extraordinary amount of fiction into the documentary’s narrative.
The film opens with a trial detailing Pete Seeger’s indictment for contempt of court in 1957. (Seeger was a good friend of Woody Guthrie’s who often performed with him). Something that remains mysterious in the storytelling of the film, apart from the facts of Dylan’s personal history, is the sociopolitical context of sixties America in which the story is set. This backdrop is something the film glosses over, which I found to be detrimental to the film’s impact and was an issue with the film that became distinct and magnified only after I left the theatre. I was reading an article on the Library of Congress website to fill out some of the voids of the film’s narrative, like the circumstances of this opening trial with Seeger that were unclear to me, and was surprised to find how entrenched the folk circles in America were in political controversy at this time. It was at the time when Dylan was moving to New York City that the anti-communist Red Scare movement in America was mobilizing.[5] The House Un-American Activities Committee that emerged from the Red Scare movement performed investigations on behaviors and activities that were flagged as communist leaning and thus deemed disloyal to American democracy. Pete Seeger, portrayed by Edward Norton in the film, who maintains a substantial role, was one of a number of folk singers who were denounced as communist. As a result of this strict government regulation of certain arts groups, many folk singers avoided social and political commentary at all costs in order to be popularly successful without the worry of accusations of communism. When I learned about this historical context in my readings after seeing the film, I felt like the lack of conversation, let alone allusions to it, is a touch careless, and I do wonder how Dylan fit into this anti-communist conversation and how this affected his relationships, life, and music. I’m sure that there are others like me, who didn’t come to the theatre as Dylan afficionados, who might feel the same way. There is reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the film, but like the Red Scare investigations, the event is left vague for the audience.
I was struck by how evocative the folk rock genre becomes when the music is set to the theatre screen. I have seen numerous other biopics covering a musician or music group, but never a folk artist. For me, it evoked the feeling of nostalgia one might associate with a home video coupled with the peppy sound of instruments like the harmonica and banjo. Another way of saying this is that the songs were more emotionally moving than, say, watching a pop concert film.
“A Complete Unknown” pays close attention to two different and serious love interests that Dylan had: Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez. These relationships occupy a lot of time in the film. Dylan and Joan had a turbulent relationship, and the screenplay pays homage to this. One of my two favorite lines of dialogue is when Dylan says that Joan’s songs are “like an oil painting at the dentist’s office.” I don’t personally agree, but I thought the line was a clever roast from one artist to another. Baez’s famous song “Diamonds and Rust” was written about her relationship with Dylan.
I also liked a couple of lines that Chalamet delivers during a time when we observe a Dylan who is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the constraints of industry pressures and restrictions that ensue with his budding fame. After a cocktail party with the affluent Greenwich village crowd, where he is roped into doing a gig by his manager, though he was not given sufficient notice about it, Dylan tells a guest in the elevator on his way out of the party: “Everyone’s asking where the songs come from, but what they’re really asking, is why songs didn’t come to them” – a moment of dialogue that captures well a nuance of celebrity.
Star Rating: 3.8 out of 5
Links to Explore:
1. “How Timothée Chalamet ‘Pushed the Bounds’ to play Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown’”
2. “Folk Singers, Social Reform, and the Red Scare”
3. “Who is Sylvie Russo?”
4. Highway 61 Revisited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_61_Revisited
5. So where does Bob Dylan come from?
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Dylan-American-musician
[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Dylan-American-musician
[4] https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/timothee-chalamet-a-complete-unknown-bob-dylan-cover-story-interview-1235157596/
[5]https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197399/#:~:text=This%20led%20to%20a%20long,the%20symptoms%20of%20Huntington's%20disease.