A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

Genre: Drama/Music
Director: Jesse Eisenberg
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Norbert Leo Butz, Dan Fogler, Scoot McNairy 
Runtime: 2 hr 21 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Walt Disney
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 27 February 2025

Synopsis: New York, 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forges intimate relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates worldwide. Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the electric true story behind the rise of one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history.

The film also stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash and Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie.

Movie Review:

If you were fortunate enough to have lived through the 60s, you’d know that those were troubled times not only in the United States but also the world, what with the civil rights movement fuelling protests and arrests domestically and the larger Cuban missile crisis casting anxiety just whether the Soviet Union would indeed launch a barrage into the United States. We say this because there is a parallel to the discontent, disquiet and disharmony we are seeing both in the US and in the world today, and in portraying the first four rocket-fuelled years of Bob Dylan’s career, ‘A Complete Unknown’ holds up a mirror to the past to allow us to reflect on the present.

Indeed, that is – we believe – the greatest accomplishment of James Mangold’s biopic. Fans of Dylan will no doubt be poring over every single detail to assess how faithful it is to the singer-songwriter’s life, but coming after many, many ballads of this thin man, we think that holding such a lens to Mangold’s entry misses the point; instead, in adapting Elijah Wald’s 2015 non-fiction book ‘Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties’, Mangold and his fellow screenwriter Jay Cocks spotlights a particular period in history that was ripe for a disruptor like Dylan, and how after disrupting the folk scene with his original compositions, Dylan disrupted himself in order not to be typecast and to expose the folkies for their own hypocrisy.

Like we said, to insist on complete authenticity would be futile, because there is no way a two-and-a-half hour feature-length film would be able to fully capture the ups and downs and ins and outs of Dylan’s musical journey; and to Mangold’s credit, the filmmaker makes largely the right choices in compressing timelines, weighing the facts against the legend and streamlining the narrative into a brisk, tuneful and very accessible representation of the iconic artist. Indeed, those who know the story from Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich Village as a 19-year-old Minnesota nobody to the upheaval he caused in the 1965 Newport Folk Festival by going electric should not expect anything revelatory per se, but perhaps savour it as an occasion to be transported back to a time that on hindsight seemed a lot simpler and a lot more nostalgic.

To be frank, we’ve always believed Mangold deserves more recognition than he does, and here he reinforces once again his storytelling prowess, navigating a story that manages to sketch out Dylan’s relationship with fellow folk singer Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), his tempestuous relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and his on-and-off romance with the blond activist cum painter Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) based on his longtime girlfriend Suze Rotolo who was apparently fictionalised at the singer’s request. In lesser supporting roles, Mangold manages to squeeze in parts like Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) and musicologist Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz), as well as fellow musicians Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) and Bobby Neuwirth (Will Harrison), each of whom serve either as inspiration or forewarning of the implications of his musical choices.

It is a lot to cover all right, and again it is to Mangold’s credit that it all unfolds with such ease, coherence and even emotion. Oh yes, if you are willing to cast your cynicism aside, you’ll find that it is a deeply emotional and sentimental film on many counts – at the personal level, how Dylan’s inspiration ultimately needed to come from within to be authentic, and how being an icon ironically become a source of unease and tension for Dylan, especially given the risk of typecasting; at the inter-personal level, how through music and lyrics the connection between Bob and Joan was forged, and how it would have been difficult for any outsider (i.e. Sylvie) to overlook the obvious chemistry between them; and last but not least, at the cultural level, how the folk scene gained appeal and relevance through embodying the politics and concerns of the times, and how it then became naturally afraid of losing that significance, to the extent of becoming tunnel focused on its own purity.  

Mangold is also very good with actors, and his knack of drawing the best from his actors is just as evident here. As Dylan, Timothée Chalamet is absolutely magnetic, melting right into the role playing the enigmatic genius with just the right balance of ambiguity and empathy. Never mind the fact that he remains a somewhat unknown even by the end of the film, Chalamet portrays his subject’s frustration at being boxed in by folkies with utter clarity. Oh, did we also mention that Chalamet does his own singing throughout the movie, which he injects with feeling and emotion. Of all the other stellar supporting acts, we were especially enamoured with that of Norton, whose hopes, joys and sorrow with Dylan’s rise and revolt is written plainly and poignantly on his face.

‘A Complete Unknown’ won’t please purists of Dylan or for that matter, anyone looking for a detailed retelling of the artist; but in these uncertain times, these times when we know the times, the times they are a-changing, it is a beautifully elegiac portrait of that period not so long ago when the world was also in a bit of mess and when Dylan captured the zeitgeist to give the masses then solace, perspective and even refuge. Whilst other biopics have taken a more creative approach, Mangold sticks with a straightforward, clear-eyed musical drama that builds a realistic world with sweep, detail and sensitivity, and for a new generation of viewers and listeners, offer consolation that sometimes the answer is indeed blowing in the wind.

Movie Rating:

(You may know the story of Bob Dylan through and through, but this latest biopic is a beautiful, lyrical and poignant portrait of a time not so different from now where we needed solace, perspective and even refuge)

Review by Gabriel Chong