"I hear Bob is playing electric."
Bob Dylan has always prided himself on being an enigma. A musical genius behind hits such as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," the Minnesota native arrived in New York City as if by magic to revolutionize the folk music genre. The result, of course, is that Dylan ended up revamping music altogether.
It doesn't take a Bob Dylan expert to know the artist is quite an independent being. A savior of Folk music starting in the early 1960s, Dylan rode the coattails of those who performed before him, namely Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Pioneers in their field of choice, Guthrie and Seeger, wanted peace on Earth, while Dylan chose to go his own way with the music he adored.
Bob Dylan's life, or rather a slice of it, is examined in "A Complete Unknown," starring Timothée Chalamet as the weary traveler. Directed by James Mangold ("Walk the Line"), Chalamet's poetic lyricist charm as Dylan is complemented by the actor's own singing and guitar playing throughout the film, similar to what Mangold achieved with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in "Walk the Line."
But unlike the former flick, "A Complete Unknown" focuses wholeheartedly on the early to mid-1960s, when Dylan was becoming a household name and shunned the Folk music world by switching to an electric guitar at the famed Newport Folk Festival circa 1965. Shacking up with an activist girlfriend (an underutilized Elle Fanning) in New York City while cheating with fellow singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), Dylan's reputation as the bad boy of Folk comes to a head with his unruly personality and audacious handwritten songs.
"A Complete Unknown" feels a bit like a forced biographical film without the substance and prolonged nature of similar movies like "Walk the Line" and "Ray." It isn't a full picture of who Dylan is or was, but it provides enough glimpses into his psyche to inform an audience who might not know just how much of an asshole Dylan could be. Never shying away from what makes Dylan a rockstar to this day, the film is a tour-de-force for Chalamet's acting skills as he fully transforms into the singer-songwriter.
But the movie, for all its flaws and ideas of who Bob Dylan was in the 1960s, isn't Chalamet's alone. Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks are too bright to leave the film's success up to its mysterious lead. Instead, "A Complete Unknown" is a breeding ground for greatness in its supporting cast, led by Barbaro, who gives the real-life Joan Baez some much-needed depth as she traverses a career decline and mixes Dylan's lyrics into her brand.
Their tumultuous relationship is studied while Barbaro encapsulates Joan's earthiness and beauty.
A good supporting cast wouldn't be complete without today's hardest-working actors, including Edward Norton, Boyd Holbrook, and Scoot McNairy, who embody Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, and Woody Guthrie, respectively. Norton gets most of the screen time of the three, playing mentor to Dylan's would-be Judas. Though McNairy portrays an almost mute and ill Guthrie towards the end of the singer's life, his presence is felt throughout the film as Dylan's guiding light.
"A Complete Unknown" lives up to its apropos title as both a look at Bob Dylan's meteoric rise and a confounding approach to depicting a man still running in his circles of mayhem. No one has really pinpointed Dylan on screen like Cate Blanchett accomplished in 2007's "I'm Not There," but Timothée Chalamet's performance here inches closer to who the real Dylan is perceived to be. James Mangold has made a worthwhile biopic that falters at times of great fruition but captures a moment in which music was changed forever.
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