One of the joys of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, the unapologetically glamorous portrait of Bob Dylan, is its unbridled celebration of creativity and music. Although a little tidily sketched, Mangold creates an atmosphere that’s so vibrant and infectious, the movie simply overshadows historical details devotees of the Sixties singer/songwriter might hold dear. Unlike 2007’s I’m Not There, in which director Todd Haynes deconstructs Dylan’s mystique by having several actors depict his incarnations over the course of his varied career, Mangold is only interested in the artist’s journey from his arrival in New York City, in 1961, to his controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he played electric guitar to an audience of horrified folk music fans. Imagine if Taylor Swift suddenly broke into a few death metal tunes for an arena of adoring Swifties, basically melting their faces with some volcanic riffs, and you’ll get the idea of the kind of impact this moment had.
Even if you’re not a fan of Mangold’s approach to the material, which can be a little grandiose and affected at times, his passion for the material is palpable and focused. Instead of dwelling on the specifics of Dylan’s rise to fame, which was intense and rapid, Mangold is interested in how Dylan’s journey addresses themes such as obsession, community pressure, and artistic integrity. Mangold leaves the unraveling of Dylan’s mystique to other filmmakers. As he is portrayed by a splendid Timothée Chalamet, you might not leave the theater knowing Bob Dylan, the man, but you’ll come closer to understanding Bob Dylan, the artist.
We meet Dylan when he arrives in New York City in 1961 with a dilapidated suitcase and an acoustic guitar. He immediately finds his idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who is in hospice care for Huntington’s disease; sitting at Guthrie’s bedside is Pete Seeger (a captivating Edward Norton). Dylan introduces himself to the two unsuspecting men before playing “A Song to Woody.” With his gravelly voice and baby-faced enthusiasm, Guthrie and Seeger know they’re witnessing the next wave of the folk genre they helped to create.
Pretty soon, Dylan is playing in Greenwich Village clubs, where he meets those who’ll become instrumental to his rise to fame. First, he meets Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), a fellow singer and poet who’s already been on the cover of Time magazine. He also falls in love and moves in with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), who’s based on Dylan’s ex Suze Rotolo. With the help of manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), Dylan records his 1962 debut, which features mostly folk and blues covers. Although the record company thinks he’s too young to offer anything original, Dylan hides in his apartment subsisting on scraps, smoking cigarettes, and crafting legendary songs.
Chalamet performs nearly a dozen songs during the film, finding his own groove instead of simply imitating Dylan’s famous growl.
The movie makes clear that before he became famous, Dylan created a persona that he utilized both onstage and in his personal life. He’s both foppish and sardonic, but also abrasive and mistrustful. He refuses to give anyone a glimpse into his interior life. This is especially frustrating to his girlfriend, Sylvie, while occasional lover Joan Baez merely studies him as if she’s breaking a code. As Chalamet plays him, Dylan will go to great lengths to keep the real Robert Zimmerman (his given name) from seeing the light of day. In doing so, he’s creating his own mystique. Whether Dylan’s transformation is marked by fear or courage is open to debate.
As Dylan’s star rises, exposing folk music to a wider world, the same community that initially promoted his talents begins feeling like a noose around his neck. Dylan won’t be boxed in, not even by those who helped him achieve success. Co-written by Mangold and Jay Cocks and based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, the movie depicts Dylan as an artist with laser-beam focus. Anyone who exists on the periphery of his art, even if he loves them, is susceptible to his apathy. The only person who seems to understand him is fellow minstrel and friend Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), who’s in the process of breaking with his own, Nashville-based coterie.
Although the film lacks the dramatic thrust and discernible character arc of Mangold’s other biopic, Walk the Line, it’s still an engrossing examination of talent and the pitfalls of fame. Tensions simmer in Dylan’s paranoia about being pigeonholed by the folk community, the record companies, and even his lovers. His need to create is urgent, leading to friendship with musician Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison), whose unbridled, footloose influence no doubt inspired Dylan to break new ground and, as the film suggests, probably led to the recording of the studio album Highway 61 Revisited. The plot is like a Sixties bohemian version of Amadeus, where a misunderstood genius is constantly commodified, critiqued, and envied by everyone in his orbit, which also leads to Dylan exhibiting a dark side — he can be obnoxious, self-centered, and sullen. While Baez is willing to play popular favorites to the crowd, Dylan scoffs and walks offstage, humiliating her in the process. Mangold frames Dylan’s journey into the bowels of celebrity with a curious anxiety, ratcheting up his nervousness and mistrust as the world clamors for his attention. Tonally, it’s a slow burn, which culminates at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan plugs in an electric guitar and turns his back on the folksters (and his devoted audience), cementing his legend as an independent artist who will always carve his own path, no matter the risk.
Unfortunately, the movie also relies on manufactured and hokey sequences to create its 1960s New York City setting. You’d think that after Walk the Line was so heavily parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Mangold might avoid worn-out tropes of the standard biopic. But Mangold is a Hollywood director with a capital “H” (his last film was the abysmal Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), and his tendency to shovel the bloat comes with the program. Take the sequence where citizens are fleeing the city during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the camera swoops into a club where Dylan is playing “Masters of War” at that very moment. Uh-huh. This is one of a few contextual sequences that are so didactic and forced, you almost expect Forrest Gump to appear and remind us that it’s the Sixties. Luckily, the story recovers from these pitfalls and gets back to the business of Bob Dylan, and not world affairs.
Hyperbolic excursions aside, the film moves at a brisk, rhythmic pace. And the performances occasionally lift the material to transcendent heights. Barbaro, as Baez, exudes a tenderness that gives the movie an appealing, romantic texture. And although her character is underwritten, Fanning is equally good. But this is Timothée Chalamet’s movie. He gives Dylan defiance, humor, and enough abstraction to keep his mystique intact. Chalamet performs nearly a dozen songs during the film, finding his own groove instead of simply imitating Dylan’s famous growl.
For Dylanologists, A Complete Unknown will play like a sanitized version of his greatest hits. They’re not wrong. This is far from an authentic or comprehensive depiction of one of the most elusive, madcap artists this country has produced. Although the movie’s period re-creation is visually impressive, the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis does a much better job of capturing the vigorous, soul-crushing struggles of a street musician during that era. Mangold needed to apply one more layer of dirt to legitimize Dylan’s experience.
Still, Mangold’s interests go beyond telling Bob Dylan’s story. The movie has a curiosity about the convergence of talent and celebrity, and the challenges that poses to a scruffy kid from Duluth, Minnesota. In charting the hero’s journey into a world where people compromise their talents and sell their wares at a cheap price, Mangold honors a man who refused to do so. The final result might not match the complexity of Dylan himself, but it effectively pulls you into his entangled universe. ❖
Chad Byrnes has been a film critic for the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice for six years. He lives in Los Angeles.