"A COMPLETE UNKNOWN" - REVIEW
Given the pedigree of the subject and the people in front of and behind the camera, I suspected that a Bob Dylan biopic was going to carry some weight, and it would likely earn its weight in Oscar gold. What I did not count on was that I’d get completely swept up in it.
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the rambling, rollicking and rousing new film by James Mangold, breathes fresh life into the often hackneyed and reductive music biopic genre. It smartly focuses on the beginning of Dylan‘s career, from 1961 when he hitchhikes from Minnesota to Greenwich Village with not much more than a guitar, to 1965 when he closes the Newport Folk Festival. The new film is the more accessible cousin to Todd Haynes’s brilliantly avant garde I’M NOT THERE in 2007, largely a series of vignettes in which Dylan is portrayed by multiple actors, from the late Heath Ledger to Richard Gere to Cate Blanchett, to illustrate different phases of his life and career.
James Mangold is one of my personal favorite filmmakers and has a varied filmography which, so far, includes HEAVY, COP LAND, GIRL INTERRUPTED, KATE & LEOPOLD, IDENTITY, 3:10 TO YUMA, KNIGHT AND DAY, THE WOLVERINE, LOGAN, FORD V. FERRARI, and last summer’s criminally undervalued INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. He is a director steeped in classic movie storytelling and structure, who doesn’t really have a distinct, pronounced style, but he possesses a commitment, consistency, sensitivity, and muscularity to his approach, as well as a willingness to just keep trying new things, whether it’s a time travel romcom or a bloody Marvel movie.
Bolder and more impressive still is the fact that Mangold already directed the terrific (if slightly more conventional) WALK THE LINE in 2005, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (in her Academy Award-winning role) as Johnny and June Carter Cash. I can’t think of too many directors who have gone back to the well like this, especially after WALK THE LINE (and the music legend biopic genre in general) was parodied so mercilessly in WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY. Instead, Mangold (with co-screenwriter Jay Cocks) digs deeper and leans into the mercurial nature of an iconic once-in-a-generation artist in the making. While Mangold’s film may be more formal in technique and more linear in its narrative (certainly when compared to I’M NOT THERE), it manages to be subversive in its own way: it’s both the crowd pleaser that we might expect from him, and the anti-crowd pleaser that we expect from (and, I feel, is worthy of) Dylan himself.
Mangold doesn’t achieve this alone. In his second great performance of 2024, following strong work as Paul Atreides aka Lisan Al Gaib aka Usul aka Muad’dib aka Kwisatz Haderach (okay, I’ll stop) in Denis Villeneuve’s formidable modern classic DUNE PART TWO, Timothée Chalamet is near transcendent as Bob Dylan. He inhabits him and lets Dylan envelop him. There has been much talk about Chalamet’s five years of preparation to play the part, and the way that work presents itself here is nearly effortless. While Chalamet‘s eyes don’t look much like Dylan‘s, they similarly possess fire and intelligence and deep wisdom that can often only be accessed by a pen to paper or while picking a guitar.
This of course is much to the chagrin of the people in his immediate orbit, where Dylan is constantly challenging what people expect of him. This comes out in his relationships with his career father figures, such as folk hero Pete Seeger (played with unusual softness by Edward Norton) and the ailing folk legend Woody Guthrie (in a nearly wordless performance by the underrated Scoot McNairy, also amazing as Amy Adams’ husband in this year’s NIGHTBITCH), who both see Dylan as a beacon for the folk movement. This also appears in his on-again-off-again relationships with two women. First there is the completely lovely and demure Sylvie, an open-book Greenwich Village artist played by the graceful Elle Fanning, who can convey heartbreak whether there are tears in her eyes or not. Then there is the more obviously tempestuous dalliance with singer/songwriter Joan Baez, played with earthy sensuality by Monica Barbaro (a real find), and we see how that tempestuousness plays out while in direct competition in recording studios or record stores, in bed together, or on tour. Rounding it out is Bob Dylan‘s penpal relationship and “bromance” with Johnny Cash, portrayed differently here than in the 2005 film, and played with a beautifully hardscrabble cantankerousness and great humor by Mangold regular Boyd Holbrook, who will not have you thinking about Joaquin Phoenix at all. Cash still carries weight, but here he is allowed to be comic relief. Each of the performances, particularly of the more well-documented historical persons, never feel like impersonations. They just feel real.
In line with that authenticity, as usual with a James Mangold picture, the craft is uniformly exquisite, although this time simultaneously transporting us while not making it feel like a museum piece that we can only observe from behind a velvet rope. Returning are his go-to collaborators: cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, costume designer Arianne Phillips, and production designer François Audouy, all bringing out the best in each other, whether it’s a folk venue, an outdoor concert, or the places in between where memories are made. The camera never moves any more than it has to, because the actors—and the music they are all playing and singing themselves—can support the stillness of the filmmaking.
In case I haven’t made it clear by now, this one is a winner. I absolutely adored this film. While in production, the film’s title was “Going Electric” (after Elijah Wald’s biography). While the film is most certainly electric, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is more apt. Dylan is notoriously cagey about his past and a man of few spoken words, so perhaps you may come out of the film not knowing much more about him than you did when you went in. However, the beauty and the magic of the film is that it sends you out with an electric charge, with a belief in transcending circumstances and expectations, and that pure creative expression, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it, is the means to freedom. At the very least, you’ll leave the theater with songs in your head. In terms of knowing the man, his art brings to mind this paraphrased quote by Shel Silverstein: “If you want to find out what [an artist] really feels, look at his work. That’s enough.”
Or, in the words of the man himself, “how does it feel?”
#movieFriend
#thezlistwithzachhammill
#ACompleteUnknown
#timotheechalamet
#bobdylan
#JamesMangold
#ellefanning
#edwardnorton
#scootmcnairy
#monicabarbaro
#boydholbrook
#johnnycash
#joanbaez
#SearchlightFilms
Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Association (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/