Disney / Buena Vista
There are two ways one can review a biographical motion picture.
The first is to compare what’s onscreen with what you know (or think you know) of what actually happened. The second, and fairest, is to evaluate the movie itself solely for its merits as a film.
Unfortunately, with bio-flicks, it’s impossible not to take the first way into account when attempting to do the second.
First some background.
When I was a kid in the early 1960s, folk music was the “IN” thing, brother! The Kingston Trio, The Mitchell Trio (with John Denver), Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, the New Christy Minstrels and lots of other folk singers were on TV all the time.
There was even a weekly show to spotlight them, called Hootenanny.
In school, we were taught to sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” in the same music classes that taught us “America, the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.”
When the Beatles led the British Invasion in 1964, the folk music all seemed to go away, almost overnight. It didn’t though! It just plugged in and became folk rock—The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, and Simon & Garfunkel are just some examples.
A Complete Unknown focuses on one specific and infinitely influential folk singer, Bob Dylan, and those folks caught up in his orbit up through 1965 when he, too, infamously plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival.
Based on the 2015 book, “Dylan Goes Electric” by Elijah Wald, we start with the complete unknown, Bobby Dylan popping in to see his idol, Woody Guthrie, in the hospital. Considering the title of the book, you can tell where the story’s headed.
We find out little of nothing about his background.
We barely learn his real name (Robert Zimmerman) and never hear he chose the name “Dylan.” While visiting Guthrie, he meets and impresses Pete Seeger who encourages him to write and sing and even gets him on stage at an open mike. From there, Dylan’s career rapidly takes off, he meets two young women and falls for them, he gets a recording contract, he becomes a star, a jerk, a folkie idol, and a loose cannon, all in short order.
Producer/director/co-writer James Mangold was responsible for two Wolverine movies but also some previous bio-pics including Ford v Ferrari and Walk the Line, with Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. Cash, now played by Boyd Holbrook, also figures as an important character in A Complete Unknown.
Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan, and he does a truly impressive job. The screenplay doesn’t give us much background on him but we quickly learn he’s a rebel with or without a cause. In his award-winning performance, Chalamet deftly treads the fine line of making him cool, sympathetic, and charismatic while at the same time not shying away in the least from the icon’s cold quirkiness, stubbornness, and snobbishness.
Edward Norton co-stars as Pete Seeger and as good as Chalamet is, Norton acts rings around him all through the picture. Actress Illeana Douglas called him “the glue” that pulls and holds the film together. When Norton is first seen early in the story, my mind thought, “That’s the real Pete Seeger! But…he’s dead!” Norton not only looks almost exactly like the former banjo player from The Weavers but he also moves and sounds like Seeger, both when he talks and when he sings! It’s pretty astonishing, actually!
In fact, all of the singing in the picture is done by the actors.
Chalamet does a pitch-perfect impression of Dylan’s unique style of vocalization. For me, Monica Barbaro doesn’t quite capture the dark attraction of Joan Baez, who, for many, epitomized the folk music movement after her Time magazine cover appearance. She, too, however, does sing just like the real Joan.
Elle Fanning gives an emotional performance as “Sylvie Russo,” a character who did not exist in real life but who is strongly based on Suze Rotolo, a woman often described as Dylan’s muse. That’s her in the famous cover shot of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album.
Suze was also the witness at the 1963 wedding of smooth-voiced Phil Ochs, a fellow folk idol whose career often crossed paths with Bob’s during the period in which the picture takes place and yet who is conspicuously absent. The two were often said to be “friendly rivals.” The Joan Baez character does sing one of Ochs’ signature songs, “There But for Fortune,” in the movie but that’s it.
Also missing is context about what else was going on in music during those same years.
Dylan wasn’t so much becoming a household name due to his singing but due to other groups like The Byrds, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the Turtles giving his tunes poppier treatment. The Beatles are mentioned but no reference is given to Dylan famously meeting them in late ’64 and giving them their first taste of marijuana.
In fact, stimulants seem conspicuously absent from the entire story, other than alcohol and cigarettes, which—accurate to the period—everyone is always smoking!
See! I told you. When you know something about the real story—whether you’re right or not—it’s impossible not to review a biography film with all that in mind. I swear I tried.
With its impressive locations, cinematography, and atmospheric set decoration, some downright brilliant acting, and, of course, its history-making music, A Complete Unknown ends right where we knew it would.
Even at two and a half hours, you’ll wish it went on.
Extras include commentary and Making-Of featurettes.
Booksteve recommends.
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