A Complete Unknown
Updated: Feb 23, 2025
Timothée Chalamet shines in this entertaining if ill-balanced study of Bob Dylan’s rise and demise in 60s folk music.
In New York 1961, an unknown young drifter called Bob (Timothée Chalamet) arrives with a guitar to meet his hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) who has suffered a stroke. Walking in on a visit with Guthrie with Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), Bob plays them a little tune that catches their attention and compels Seeger to help get Bob performing on stages and land a record deal. From there Bob grows an infamous talent in folk music which takes an unexpected turn.
The music biopic is a very tiresome genre today and very few entries offer much interest into their icons and the social impact of their legacy. Director, James Mangold is a reliable pair of hands with a clear affinity for country music most comparatively with his previous Johnny Cash film Walk the Line (2005) and his western inflection in 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and Logan (2017), and now with A Complete Unknown he puts together an enjoyable mixed bag that follows some basic rules but successfully stiches a complex portrait of Dylan’s significance presence in the folk scene.
Mangold and Jay Cocks’s script juggles multiple threads of Dylan’s early life including his mythology, folk politics, and a tentative love triangle with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and Elle Fanning’s algorithmic girlfriend Sylvie. Each never really gets its full share, but Dylan’s romantic entanglements are the most ill served as Elle Fanning is given a very uninvolving role that literally watches from the side-line. Meanwhile Monica Barbaro shares some beautiful moments performing alongside Chalamet, their relationship is underdeveloped, but I understand it is more of a by-product of Dylan’s narcissistic tendencies.
I almost would want to split the film into two chapters and call the first half A Complete Unknown, and the second Going Electric, that being the first half of the film follows the allusive Dylan’s discovery as a country singer, with the latter half exploring the controversial shift to electric music that aggravated his fans. It is in this second half that the film really finds its feet. This Dylan breaks out with his politically relevant song writing which make his name, but as he becomes tide to this label, Dylan passively revolts against his own celebrity and fans to be a freewheeling chain-smoking artist. Embroiled in folk politics, the Newport Folk Festival where Dylan makes numerous appearances becomes an institution controlled by Edward Norton’s soft spoken banjo playing Seeger who needs to keep folk music relevant and pure. Spanning only a few years, we are treated to several iconic concerts and performances with well-polished vocals and sound design to maximise the authenticity of the Chalamet and Barbaro’s voices. Mangold puts these scenes together with time and care to draw attention to effect that these live performances had to the crowd.
But of course, the major component that keeps it all afloat is Chalamet’s spot-on performance as Dylan. Chalamet’s casting is well judged as he captures the arrogant cool bravado of Dylan’s youthful intelligence and arse-whole nature, with a sensationally faithful singing voice to go along with it. His manifestation is mysterious and shallow, we never get under his skin, but that’s kind of the point. Dylan makes for an uncrackable musical subject due to his puzzling demeanour that many other films have fixated on too, and maybe this is one is a more traditional form to tell the story, nonetheless Chalamet channels this confident egotistic artist seamlessly.
Clocking in 140 minutes, Mangold doesn’t’ take us on a life tour, and while it could lose some time to focus on the real meat of the drama in its latter half, A Complete Unknown is a very swift and comfortable ride. It is not the most remarkable picture but is proficient enough for the assignment. During its climatic finish, the film manages to tie Dylan’s rebellious nature to his career shift resulting in a substantial narrative about a defiant artist, Dylan doesn’t want to belong to anyone.
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