Movie Review: A Complete Unknown

I can’t say with any certainty why I was never really a big fan of Bob Dylan’s music, I just wasn’t, and so I didn’t exactly have a lot of excitement for this movie about his formative years as a hit recording artist. It didn’t take long however for A Complete Unknown to have me realizing that I’d been missing out. The movie doesn’t do anything all that revolutionary as far as rock music biopics go, but by providing a glimpse into the circumstances that led to his breakthrough and highlighting some of the societal events that influenced his songwriting it helps the viewer to understand what his music meant at the time and how relevant it remains today.

Timothée Chalamet is superb as a young Bob Dylan, who arrives in New York City in 1961 looking to meet his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who has just been hospitalized with a severe illness that leaves him unable to speak. When he gets to the hospital, guitar in hand, he finds Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) keeping him company. The two men greet him kindly and he sings them a song that immediately floors them, leading Seeger to take him into his home and help him get started in the city’s folk music scene.

Seeger brings Dylan to an open mic night at one of the city’s most esteemed clubs where he takes the stage after Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and catches the attention of music manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), who quickly signs the singer and gets him a contract at Columbia Records. Initially relegated to recording covers of existing songs, he is finally able to record his original compositions thanks to help from Baez and Grossman and becomes one of the genre’s biggest stars. He still bristles at being put into a box by those around him though and yearns for more creative freedom, ultimately utilizing electric instruments and spurring controversy amongst the folk music purists who had previously championed him.

This isn’t a flashy movie, with director James Mangold relying almost exclusively on the songs and the cast to sell the material, a decision that pays off handsomely. The many musical performances stuffed into A Complete Unknown are flawlessly executed, nailing the sound of the originals and being staged such that the audience can often feel like they were there in the room, experiencing a uniquely magical moment.

There isn’t a bad performance to be found, with Norton and Barbaro delighting as the two singers who helped launch his career and sometimes finding themselves at odds with him, and Elle Fanning being both charming and heartbreaking as his one-time girlfriend Sylvie Russo. It is Chalamet who truly shines here though. That he is a great actor isn’t a revelation, but he has really stepped up his game as Dylan, capturing the demeanor and voice of the man almost flawlessly, and especially nailing the songs. The entire movie hinges on his performance and he more than delivers.

By recreating a small part of Bob Dylan’s life story and contextualizing it within the ways he was both influenced by and an influence on the events of the time, Mangold and co-screenwriter Jay Cocks have spun up a story that is about the music and its effect on listeners as much as it is about the musician. The times may always be a changin’, but Bob Dylan’s legacy remains unchanged, and after seeing A Complete Unknown I would now consider myself a fan. ★★★★★