As a biopic, A Complete Unknown is obligated to show us its subject’s humble origins.  Accordingly, the movie opens with a twenty year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) in the back of a station wagon.  He’s hitching his way from New Jersey to Greenwich Village to see his folk music hero, Woody Guthrie.  Dylan works on a song during the ride, scratching out lyrics in a notebook while refining the melody on his guitar.  Dylan’s workmanlike qualities, specifically how he was always working on his music at all times, is a theme the movie returns to again and again.

When Dylan arrives in the Village, he stops at a bar and asks the barkeep where he can find his hero, Woody Guthrie.  New Jersey.  “I just came from Jersey,” Dylan grumbles.  This nice bit of cinematic shorthand tells us that this early version of Dylan needed a guiding hand.  Dylan’s artistic compass appears in the form of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), another renowned folk singer who just lost his contempt of Congress case.  (He refused to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.)  As we soon see, Seeger’s calm, inner strength was  critically important towards getting Dylan on the road to success.

Dylan meets Seeger at the hospital where Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) is being treated for a debilitating illness.  Dylan introduces himself and asks if he can play them a song he wrote for Guthrie.  Dylan may not know the first thing about having a career as a folk singer-songwriter, but he’s got plenty of confidence.  Guthrie is moved by Dylan’s performance, as is Seeger, who invites Dylan to stay with him and his family until he can find a place of his own.  If you needed a reminder that this movie takes place in the Sixties, here you go.  People back then would trust you just because you sang a song with conviction.  Try imagining that happening in 2025.

While a house guest, Seeger introduces Dylan to the local folk scene.  Dylan plays wherever people will have him, initially unglamorous gigs at churches and music halls.  If you’re an aspiring performer, the movie can be taken as a handy guide for things to do.  Find a mentor.  Never turn down a gig when you can’t afford to.  Pay your dues.  Always work on your material.  This movie wants us to know precisely what it takes to be successful as a performer.

When not playing, Dylan attended concerts to broaden his knowledge of the genre.  It just so happens that while at a church where folk songs are being recorded for posterity, he first meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning).  (She’s the young lady who appears on the cover of Dylan’s “Freewheelin’” album.)  As a couple, they personify the saying “opposites attract”.  He’s a wispy   figure in his rumpled, worn clothes with an unruly head of hair.  Sylvie, on the other hand, is a statuesque beauty, with perfectly coiffed hair and chic clothing.  Dylan, again with confidence to spare, goes right up to her and chats her up.  Perhaps she’s attracted to how unlike Dylan is to everyone she knows.  Maybe she took to his Midwestern gruffness.  Whatever the case, Sylvie takes a liking to him and he moves into her apartment.

Eventually Seeger gets him in on open mic night at the influential Gaslight Cafe in the Village.  Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) is the headlining act that night and happens to be at loggerheads with her manager, Albert Grossman.  He wants her to sign with Columbia, but she’s loyal to her current label.  Exasperated with Baez’s stubbornness, Grossman watches Dylan’s set and is impressed.  Hilariously, Dylan takes a shot at Baez by telling the audience that she sings “maybe too pretty”.   Insulting a woman in public probably isn’t an ideal way to get her attention, but it works.  While Sylvie is out of town, Dylan begins what would become an on-again, off-again relationship with Baez.  (Dylan cheating on his girlfriend at her apartment is the only salacious part of this movie, which thankfully avoids airing his dirty laundry in favor of a more rewarding look into his musical evolution.)

After Grossman becomes Dylan’s manager and signs with Columbia, Dylan starts making real money as a recording artist.  His tours with Baez increase his fame, but he chafes at his newfound celebrity.  For example, a woman screams when she recognizes him at a bar.  (I had no idea girls went crazy at the sight of Dylan.)  Things unfortunately get out of hand and Dylan is punched in the face.  The incident catalyzes something within him, and Dylan refuses to play his hits in favor of his new material.  This puts him at odds with Baez, Seeger and the rest of the folk community, who want him to remain the main attraction for the folk music movement.  Dylan, however, has heard the future (electric guitars!) and wants to make a different kind of folk music, one with a full band that uses electric instruments.  Dylan’s pivot angers folk purists and comes to a head at Dylan’s last performance at the Newport Folk Festival.  This moment in time, where he breaks from everyone who helped him along the way, is painful but necessary in his journey from being a complete unknown to an artist known the world over.

Recommendation

While I enjoy musical biopics, they frustrate me because they never tell me what I want to know.  Instead, they offer up toe-tapping recreations of well-known songs intermixed with an examination of their personal lives.  After seeing them laid low by their own bad behavior (drugs, violence, hubris, jealousy, etc.), we’re asked to applaud when they conquer their demons in the end.  The experience is not unlike a VH1 “Behind the Music” episode:  breezy and fun but unenlightening.

What sets A Complete Unknown apart from the typical biopic is that it’s not another “hits and sins” exposee.  It deliberately spends ample time showing us how he went from being “a complete unknown” to a celebrated artist.   The movie covers his workmanlike qualities in surprising detail, showing us how much time and effort he put into becoming famous.  In caring enough to answer the “how”, the movie becomes something that biopics rarely are, which is insightful.

Timothee Chalamet, whose voice really wasn’t suitable for Wonka, does a fine approximation of Dylan throughout this movie.  Remember David Bowie’s description for Dylan’s voice, “like sand in glue”?  Chalamet does a pretty good job imitating it without devolving into mimicry.  He channels the ornery, confrontational spirit that made Dylan’s singing style so unique.  Other stand-out performances among the cast include those by Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Scoot McNairy, Dan Folger, Boyd Holbrook and Monica Barbaro.  Holbrook’s Johnny Cash is a hoot, particularly his driving scene.  Barbaro ignites the screen whenever she appears, and I’d expect her career to take off after this movie.

After the thoroughly disappointing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, writer-director James Mangold delivers a film containing everything that previous effort lacked:  compelling, well-rounded characters, authentic period detail, beautiful cinematography, crisp sound, evocative lighting, and so on.  (CGI probably was used for some of the locations, but I couldn’t tell the difference.)  Whenever a musical performance began, it felt like the movie stopped time so we could breathe it in.  Even simple performances consisting of two people and a string guitar were magical.  Mangold, who also made the equally spellbinding Walk the Line back in 2005, is definitely in his element when it comes to depicting musical personalities.  His love and respect for performers is undeniable.  Movies like this rarely have sequels, but it would be something if he and Chalamet got together in the near future for another five years of Dylan’s life.  I enjoyed A Complete Unknown so much that it made me a new fan of his.  This movie is perfect and one of the best films of 2024.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

Aside from the musical numbers, what I appreciated about A Complete Unknown was how it took the time to show what Dylan did to achieve a Beatles-level of celebrity.  The movie is instructive for any musician who wants to be successful and maintain it for years afterwards.  The first lesson provided is that Dylan worked constantly on his craft.  He was always working on a song.  When he has an idea for one, he jots it down in his notebook or on a scrap of paper.  If something comes to him while he’s walking around town, he keeps singing it until he’s back home and fleshes it out.  He spends hours working perfecting his lyrics and chord progressions.  If he’s inspired in the middle of the night, he gets up and starts working.  Dylan may be a genius, but he’s a slave to his muse.  Whenever and wherever she inspires him, he makes something of it.  He’s completely dedicated to being a singer-songwriter.

Dylan also knows in whose steps he’s following.  When he finds his way to Greenwich Village to see Woody Guthrie, he knows Woody’s music.  He knows Joan Baez’s music as well, and Pete Seeger’s.  Dylan was well-versed in the leaders of his field before he struck off on his own.  He understands why their songs work and incorporates their ideas into his music.  He’s such a dedicated student of folk music that when he sings a song he wrote for Woody in Woody’s presence, he immediately earns Woody’s respect.  While the early Dylan certainly was a remarkable artist, he also was the product of those he studied closely.  If you want your songs to be considered as one of the best, you have to know other songs that are considered to be the best inside and out.

Dylan was a student of playing the guitar as well.  He had an ear for music that allowed him to be self-taught.  When Baez asks him how he learned how to play guitar, he mentions that he picked up chords from cowboys he met while working for carnivals.  She responds by stating defensively that she was classically trained, perhaps because she doesn’t understand how Dylan can play so well without ever having had a lesson.  Further evidence of Dylan’s knack for grasping music is given when he appears on Seeger’s television show.  Seeger had a last-minute guest fill in when he thought Dylan wouldn’t make it, but when he did, Seeger invited Dylan to join them in an impromptu jam session.  The musician asks Dylan if he can play the chords he just heard, and Dylan does so without hesitation.  After watching another musician play for a minute or two, Dylan can perfectly reproduce it on cue.  Incredible.

In documenting Dylan’s falling-out with the folk music establishment, A Complete Unknown explains why his career was similar to other musicians who remained relevant for decades.  Dylan didn’t want to be pigeon-holed as a folk musician, which would have eventually turned him into a legacy act.  Instead, Dylan shook up his creative process by bringing other musicians into the recording studio with him.  (That this happens after he has a very negative experience watching a band perform speaks to his willingness to try new things.)  Dylan even starts playing the electric guitar, which he knows puts him in the crosshairs of the folk music gatekeepers.  Although he already knows that their reactions will be negative, he doesn’t care because he understands where popular music is headed.

Dylan’s decision wasn’t made only out of fear of being left behind culturally, even with the British Invasion happening in the background.  Playing with a band gets Dylan’s creative juices flowing.  He appreciates the value of collaboration and understands the benefits of having others involved in his music.  He’s not unlike Prince or David Bowie, artists who collaborated extensively as a way to keep from becoming stale.  Like them, Dylan doesn’t want to keep doing what he’s been doing because it’s what’s expected of him, or because it makes money.  Dylan wants the freedom to evolve as an artist, even when it puts his career at risk.

Musicians like Seeger and Baez were folk traditionalists first and foremost.  Dylan understands and respects this, but has no interest in having a career like theirs.  Instead, Dylan wants to grow and be on the forefront of music, even if that means saying goodbye (or flipping off) those who helped make him famous.  It’s not that Dylan ever wanted to front a band like The Kinks, but he recognized that popular music was shifting away from the “one person, one guitar” approach to a modern sound with electric instruments.  In his mind, remaining faithful to the folk scene would have resulted in a career trapped in amber (and culturally obsolete).  To paraphrase one of his most famous songs, Dylan saw that the music was a-changing and decided that it was better to ride the wave instead of having it crash into him.

A Complete Unknown excels because it shows us Dylan’s transformation from a folk singer into an artist.  In the film’s climactic scene, he intentionally played his new songs instead of his established hits to signal he was moving on.  Dylan does this not because he’s spiteful or ungrateful, but because he’s not sentimental.  For him, reliving past glories and following traditions is the exact opposite of being an artist.  

The early scene when Sylvie confronts Dylan about how he never tells her about his life before they met is critical to understanding Dylan’s approach to his music.  He shrugs off her complaint, telling her that he didn’t believe it was important.  What matters to him is what he’s doing now, the music he’s making now and the people he’s with now.  For Dylan, dwelling on the past has little value.  He wants to live in the present and create new music, which isn’t what the folk music community wants from him.  They demanded that he honor their traditions, but Dylan wanted to take his music in new directions.

Ultimately, Dylan’s break from the folk music community was necessary in order for him to become an artist.  Only when he was free from their limitations could he evolve into the artist he eventually became.  For Dylan, being an artist means taking chances, pushing boundaries and damn the consequences.  To its credit, A Complete Unknown never sugarcoats what that entailed, showing how Dylan willingly sacrificed friendships in exchange for his creative freedom.  Could he have had both?  The movie doesn’t bother answering that question, because like its subject, it has left sentimentality behind and is focused on the road ahead.

On a personal note

I’ve never liked folk music.  If someone were to ask me what my least favorite genre of music was, folk would probably be at the top of the list.  Maybe I heard America’s “Horse with no name” too many times as a child.  Or Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle”.  Or the collective works of Jim Croce.  Regardless, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the musical performances in A Complete Unknown, because I expected to only tolerate them.

Growing up, several members of my family listened to Rock music, so that’s what I was steeped in.  In those days, my radio was tuned to one of the three rock stations based in Detroit:  WRIF, WLLZ and WCSX.  (I think WABX changed formats beforehand.)   Accordingly, I knew who Bob Dylan was, as well as several of his songs.  Those stations had “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Lay Lady Lay” in regular rotation.  Two of his songs I only knew from their cover versions, Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds.  (The only one that I liked was Jimi’s.)

I never understood Dylan as a performer, probably because I never could get past his nasally  whine of a voice.  His songs never felt like rock and roll, more like folk-rock.  With no knowledge of how important he was to both folk and rock music, I was puzzled why rock stations kept playing him alongside bands like Queen, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, etc.  His music seemed out-of-place with everything else.

It wasn’t until Dylan teamed up with the other classic rockers in The Traveling Wilburys that I took a liking to him.  (I’ve always liked the Beatles and their solo projects.)  Dylan’s singing style was the same as I’d remembered, but it somehow felt right at home surrounded by George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. I liked the sly, caustic wit he brought to “Dirty World”, “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” and “Margarita”.  For the first time since I started listening to music, I kinda liked Bob Dylan.  My interest in his music never went any further than that, though.

Flash-forward thirty-seven (!) years, and I shockingly find myself enjoying every Bob Dylan song I heard in A Complete Unknown.  For whatever reason, my feelings towards his music have completely changed.  I’m interested in watching DA Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Martin Scorsese’s documentaries.  Seeing the genuine article in action could make me appreciate Mangold’s film less.  Be that as it may, this marks the first time in my life that I’m interested in knowing more about Dylan and his music.  Whatever Dylan purists may think of the film, A Complete Unknown turned me into a Dylan fan.  Will wonders never cease?