Image © Searchlight Pictures
Timothée Chalamet
Timothée Chalamet in 'A Complete Unknown'
Bob Dylan made up most of his life story. Why not grant writer-director James Mangold and screenwriter Jay Cocks similar privileges for A Complete Unknown, an account of how young Robert Zimmerman disguised his roots, mythologized his past and conquered popular culture?’
Dylan fans are an especially persnickety lot, turning over every word of his songs as if they are tea leaves. Through no fault of his own, Dylan was anointed as “the voice of his generation,” but the stubborn power of his best work and ongoing creativity continues to draw fans unconceived during the ‘60s. He is one of the last century’s looming cultural figures. How much of A Complete Unknown needs to be true? The answer is as much as possible in a story that demands an accurate depiction of the times and the protagonist’s influence on events while massaging the messy reality into a good, two-hour picture. For most of the important parts, Mangold and Cocks stick to facts, building a dramatic arc that’s emotionally if not always chronologically true.
Timothée Chalamet stars as Dylan and looks the part with his tussled hair under a fisherman’s cap. He nails the slouchy James Dean posture, the Kerouac verbal conundrums, an unease at being alone in the big city half-concealed by a careless “who cares?” shrug. A Complete Unknown begins in 1961 as Dylan lands in Manhattan, penning lyrics on scrap paper in the back of a cab. One imagines this might be true. As his self-confidence grew, his initial awkwardness sours into snark.
He comes to New York on a pilgrimage to meet his musical role model, folksinger Woody Guthrie. Here as elsewhere, Mangold and Cocks condense multiple events into a singular occurrence for dramatic impact. Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) was not present the first time Dylan met Guthrie, stricken with Huntington’s disease, but the film’s fictional encounter serves to move the story forward more rapidly. When Little Richard comes on the car radio, Dylan is forced to temper his enthusiasm after Seeger remarks that good music has “no need for frills,” especially drums and “electrical instruments.” This conversation probably never happened but foreshadows the story’s climactic event, Dylan’s pivot to folk-rock to the horror of folk purists at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. In recent decades Seeger has been caricatured as a buffoonish stick in the mud when it came to Dylan’s embrace of that new fangled invention, electricity. A Complete Unknown paints a warmer picture; he’s depicted as less dogmatic than some hardliners in the folk camp.
During a concert by bluesmen Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee at the Riverside Church, Dylan slides onto the hard wooden pew behind a woman who caught his eye. Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a slight name-change for the real Suze Rotolo, becomes his first girlfriend in New York (they were memorably captured together on the cover of his 1963 LP The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan). Their romance didn’t last as long in reality as on film, but the portrayal is otherwise plausible. She tells him everything about herself and her family, her beliefs, her work for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). He tells her tales about traveling with a circus and learning guitar from a roving cowboy.
Dylan’s most transformative relationship is with Joan Baez (Monica Belbaro). In contrast to his nasal rasp, she sings like a choir girl plucking gems from the folk-blues tradition, and unlike Dylan, songwriting comes uneasily to her. She is enraptured by the poetry that poured from his lyrics. Their love affair begins behind Rotolo’s back, but other people’s feelings aren’t paramount for Dylan. On screen as in real life, he’s young, petulant and subject to sullen moods. He sought success but when his efforts are rewarded with stardom, Dylan reacts bitterly. He doesn’t want to be chased by curiosity seekers or pummeled by autograph hounds or corralled into causes he half agrees with, much less forced to follow anyone’s musical party line.
The performances are good all around, including Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Some might suppose Cash’s inclusion nodded to Mangold’s previous film, the Cash biography Walk the Line. However, Cash was one of Dylan’s early major fans from outside the folk subculture. With no apparent computer imagining, Mangold recreates ‘60s Greenwich Village including Folk City, the Folklore Center and other landmarks. The screenplay catches the weave of the era’s concerns with references to people forgotten today such as essayist Dwight Macdonald. Folklorist Alan Lomax, manager Albert Grossman and producer John Hammond make appearances. The fallout shelter signage in Sylvie’s hallway reinforces the apocalyptic backdrop of TV news. The blurry black and white of violent pushback against Black civil rights, the Cuban missile crisis and the Kennedy assassination provide context for the composition of Dylan songs such as “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War.”
A Complete Unknown concludes in 1965 with several lifetimes ahead for Dylan. Will there be a sequel? Or two or three?
