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Bob Dylan wants to be heard, not known. He claimed that he ran away from home as a child, joined the circus and lived an adventurous life. His origins, it’s true, were as stupid as can be. Directed by Todd Haynesin his attempted biography of Dylan, I’m not there (2007), starred multiple actors in the role, heavy hitters such as Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Richard Gere. But it was Cate Blanchett who came closest to bottling his essence – that actress with the eternal twinkle in her eye, busy formulating a joke you’ll never be privy to.
James Mangold, with his new Dylan biopic, came armed with ropes and tent pegs. He’s the kind of solid, reliable director who has settled into the very foundations of Hollywood—the man behind Marvel Logan (2017), Ford vs. Ferrari (2019), i last year Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And he played the true star of the moment, Timothée Chalamet, who committed faithfully to the wobbly suspension bridge of Dylan’s voice, tilted head and crooked grin. Completely unknown takes a reverent view of Dylan’s craft, filled with technically accomplished musical performances (Chalamet’s voice isn’t perfect, but it’s undeniably impressive), and recorded with a real sensitivity to the emotional landscape of each song.
It is about obedient work. But dutiful doesn’t really agree with Dylan. Completely unknown begins with the musician’s arrival in New York in 1961, a puppyish enthusiast looking for his heroes, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). It ends with the moment when he creatively said goodbye to them, performing with electric instruments, giving a hand to the rock scene, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. People reportedly booed. Others stood in silent awe. Scene, based on the screenplay by Mangold and Jay Cocks, based on the book by Elijah Wald Dylan Goes Electric!is pure Hollywood myth-making. A fist fight breaks out as the men fight for the socket.
But the film is also, as conventional biopics require, a romance, as Dylan is torn between his sweet, civilian girlfriend Sylvia Russo (Elle Fanning)—a real person renamed here, poignantly, to protect her privacy—and folk musician Joan Baez. (Monica Barbaro), herself is clearly touched by the genius. Barbaro offers a perfect study of Baez’s broken bird’s voice, a woman with a strange, distant look in her eyes, who is always devoted to her art in her mind.
But Completely unknown the same flashpoint of Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic is missing Walk the line (2005), fueled by the sheer ferocity of love between Johnny Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter. The director even replicates the same key confrontation: in both films, their leading man sings a duet of “It Ain’t Me Babe” with their new love, while their current partner sits in the audience, a look of bitter discovery spreading across her face. Here, the comparative absence of bite in Dylan’s portrayal becomes all too apparent (it doesn’t help that Johnny Cash appears in Completely unknownplayed by Boyd Holbrook as Dylan’s sexy, troubled guardian angel).
Chalamet, perhaps, is not as perfectly prepared to play Dylan as Phoenix was to play Cash. There’s something a little too unhinged about his personality, even if the steam cloud and barricade of sunglasses aid the transformation in his later scenes. But he’s still a huge talent, and there’s a bittersweet moment he plays near the end, standing by Guthrie’s hospital bed (McNairy and Norton, it should be noted, are very strong in their limited screen time) that speaks so cleanly to the suspense and the terror of a young artist in search of his voice.
Still, despite the reminders of contemporary history (Cuban Missile Crisis! Kennedy Assassination! Weren’t the sixties wild, man!). Completely unknown struggles to engage fully with Dylan’s relationship to that intersection between politics and music. The clash between acoustic and electric, Seeger and Dylan, was more than old versus new, or rebellion against antiquated institutions, as Mangold’s film suggests. The real argument against Dylan was that, by going electric, he had in fact betrayed the authentic, politically radical heart of the people. It’s a conflict explored with much more curiosity, albeit ironically on the other hand, in Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterful work Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Completely unknown could provide an ideal rebuttal. But without that insight, Chalamet is left without much of a vessel in which to pour out his passions.
Directed by: James Mangold. Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook and Scoot McNairy. Cert. TB, 141 min
‘A Complete Unknown’ is in UK cinemas from 17th January