‘A Complete Unknown’ chronicles the early days of Bob Dylan’s career from 1961 – 1965. From his arrival in New York as an idealistic 19 year old with a guitar and a handful of songs to his rise to fame and his infamous appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The film stars Timothee Chalamet as the young troubadour himself.
I’ve been a fan of Dylan for over 45 years (My Australian Labradoodle is even named after him!). I have many of his albums spanning his whole career from folk to rock and everything in-between. ‘Forever Young’ (the ballad version from ‘Planet Waves’) is one of my top songs … ever! One of my all time fave ‘live’ albums is Dylan’s 1978 ‘Live at Budokan’ breathing new life into his older songs with some excellent arrangements. Going electric worked for me! So, as you may expect, this film connected with me on many different levels.
I’ve seen Dylan live a few times too. However, I sadly walked out of his gig at Wembley Arena a few years ago, along with 1000’s of others, when he, disappointingly, sang Sinatra covers all night. Whilst I can respect that as a musician, as a fan it was more than disappointing. I remember the London Evening Standard newspaper thinking so too, giving Dylan a ONE star review – and that was for turning up!
But Dylan didn’t care what people thought – just as he didn’t care what people thought when he went electric at Newport (or when he performed music from his ‘Christian’ albums on tour). The film brings this to life and reminds us how Dylan didn’t want to be aligned to any particular genre. Despite being labelled a folk singer, he referred to himself simply as a musician.
There was a real poignancy, for me, when the final song in the film was ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ (though in reality it was actually ‘Mr Tambourine Man’). It seemed as though Dylan was making a point about the end of an era, in this case, a musical era – moving on from Acoustic to Electric: The sky too is folding under you, and it’s all over now, baby blue.
Chalamet gives an Oscar-worthy performance bringing to life the troubled, sometimes selfish, vulnerable, definitely enigmatic, soul that Dylan was/is. Edward Norton gives a sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of Pete Seeger. Monica Barbaro is a beguiling Joan Baez and Elle Fanning portrays a troubled love interest, Suze Rotolo (though she was renamed Sylvie Russo in the film) perfectly. Indeed, the whole cast bring something to the film – and you can’t often say that about a movie!
The music performances are the film’s strongest features. Chalamet is an excellent Dylan, playing and singing with great passion and depth (he used the COVID lockdown very productively). The same can be said for the other singers, too. This brings an authenticity to the film and is a large part of why ‘A Complete Unknown’ works as well as it does.
The film captures the early 1960’s West Village, New York, scene brilliantly and the soundtrack, of course, is to die for – the music is the heart and soul of this film. The renditions are authentic and emotionally stirring and blend seamlessly with the story line – often putting a new perspective on the song in question.
Love him or hate him, there’s no doubt Dylan possessed a revolutionary talent that would change the face of music and song writing forever and this film encapsulates this wonderfully. Amazingly, Dylan remains the only songwriter to have won a Nobel Prize for Literature – as he did in 2016.
Even though the runtime of ‘A Complete Unknown’ exceeds two hours, the film never feels slow or drawn out. The story keeps you engaged from start to finish. ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a journey through music, history and the life of a legend. It’s thought provoking and visually stunning. I highly recommend it, whether you’re a Dylan fan or not. However, if you’re looking for a revelatory portrait of an iconic artist you may be slighty disappointed.
‘A Complete Unknown’, as is often the case in this type pf film. uses dramatic license with names, places and dates, but it doesn’t detract from the fact this is a strikingly well-made musical drama with pitch-perfect performances. It gets FIVE stars from me!
How does it feel,
How does it feel?
To be in your own
With no direction home,
A complete unknown … ?
revPACman 
My wife and I took our grandchildren to see this. My grandson first made me aware of the movie. We all loved it. You would expect two 60s/70s teenagers who are now in their 60s and 70s themselves to enjoy it, but two 15 year old granddaughters and a 17 year old grandson? Those kids have musical taste, I can tell you!!
As Paul says, the music and cast are brilliant. As a Johnny Cash fan I was interested in his friendship with Dylan, who was his first guest on the first ever Johnny Cash TV Show. The film depicts it well, although gets their friendship hatching at the Newport Folk Festival out by a year (it was 1964, not 1965 so Cash wasn’t there over the controversial electric set of Dylan’s). That said, the JC of the time is played to a ‘t’ by Boyd Holbrook.
I also found the depiction of the panic that was no doubt felt by all of the East Coast over the Cuban missilery crisis of 1962 was excellent.
As Paul said, Dylan fan or not, this is a great 2 hours + of a movie.
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