Directed By James Mangold

Starring – Timothee Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning

The Plot – Set in the influential New York City music scene of the early 1960s, the film follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts as his songs and his mystique become a worldwide sensation that culminates in his groundbreaking electric rock-and-roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

Rated R for adult language

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures

POSITIVES

Nearly twenty years after walking the line with Johnny Cash, Mangold returns to the music biopic subgenre that made him a household name, this time illustrating the cryptically misunderstood Bob Dylan, which could make for a rewarding, albeit challenging cinematic experience. Because so little is still known about Dylan behind the scenes of his music, the film obviously chooses to focus on his rise as one of the single most influential performers of our time, where Mangold’s direction not only zeroes in on the passionate genius of a musician with too much talent to ever be bottled by a music genre, but also his sensitivity towards fame that eventually overwhelmed him. The film wisely takes place only four years in the early act of Dylan’s career, allowing it to thankfully evade the familiar three act structures that make so many of these biopics feel interchangeable, while also tapping into the frailty of the world torn to pieces by racial divide and unpopular wars, to which Bob vividly tapped into in the depths of his lyrics, which gave him such a faithful fanbase in utilizing so many of the same feelings that they were feeling, but without a microphone to express such. While Bob is thought of as this unofficial savior to the flailing folk music scene, the second half taps into the unforeseen backlash that stemmed from Bob incorporating a more electric-based sound to his catalogue, and while his foray into the Newport Folk Festival has been firmly documented in the annals of history, it’s quite remarkable to see a film end simultaneously as the greatest and evidently worst night in the career of the singer, where his morals as an artist are tested by the many dynamics in friendship that he attained while making a name for himself. It crafts a compelling inevitability that will ultimately end in disappointment for at least one side of the equation, all the while conveying the dreaded disposition from Dylan that ultimately kept him from ever feeling fully satisfied in an industry that is constantly trying to tell him what to be and how to act. In terms of being a period piece, the film is enhanced tremendously by transformative production values that seamlessly recreate many of the settings and performances of the time, where costume designer Arianne Phillips has been quoted as saying she made wardrobes for as many as 4,000 actors on set. Her influence reaches the deepest extents of the 135-minute run time, without a shred of compromising visual in any of the 60’s threads that any actor is donning, and with the completed task of dated automobiles and set decoration continuously finding their ways into the grainy canvas of Phedon Papamichael’s weathered cinematography, the production effortlessly immerses us into a consistency in consciousness for the intended age, making it all the easier to buy what we the audience are interpreting, especially with so many great performances within this decorated ensemble taking this film to another level. While I have never doubted Chalamet’s capabilities as an actor, I worried that a Dylan portrayal might feel satirical, especially with such an unusual vocal capacity, but the actor effortlessly disappears into the role in ways that eventually come to feel quite mesmerizing, especially as the wardrobe and wig work start to surmise more of the familiarities in Dylan that are well documented. Chalamet’s own singing for the part does attain the nasally consistency of the intended pitch, but for my money it was scenes away from the stage that were most integral to me seeing him as Bob, and not just an actor portraying him, where nuances and neurosis during interaction with other characters outline perhaps one of the first examples of a socially awkward celebrity on record, to which Chalamet effectively elicits a few intended laughs, as a result of the lack of filter that Bob was evidently born without. Otherwise, Edward Norton’s memorable turn as Pete Seeger feels like the anchor of the film, with heartfelt humility and selflessness that, like Seeger to Dylan, voluntarily takes a backseat to Chalamet’s gravitational pull, but still allowing him to pick his spots to exude the kind of screen influence that Norton has perfected in such a prestigious career. Monica Barbaro also takes a bigger step into the spotlight, as Joan Baez, with an authentically stoic and unflinching turn of her own that deserves its own two hour movie. Between Barbaro’s passionate eyes constantly zeroing in on Bob during performance pairings of the two, and bluntly dry deliveries in the shared banter with Chalamet, she brings such an indescribable x-factor to the proceedings, where she makes the most of her limited time often as a combustible element that spikes the scenery. Cast aside, I would also be doing a grave disservice if I didn’t mention the rich assortment of Dylan favorites, original and covers, that make up the movie’s soundtrack. Considering this film only ranges four years in the life of the artist, it’s remarkable the level of hits that he was able to surmise during such a time frame, and whether you’re a fan of Dylan’s or not, the versatility of tones, tempos and lyrical impulses articulate Dylan’s range as a songwriter, which led to eventual relationships with some of the biggest artists in the industry, who tapped his brain to write songs for them.

NEGATIVES

Time management is undoubtedly the single biggest issue that this movie faces, with an aforementioned 135-minute run time containing a variety of subplots and dynamics that squeeze the storytelling a bit too tight to feel satisfying, all the while making Dylan feel tragically underdeveloped as a result. As previously alluded, Dylan was always a bit of a cryptic figure when it came to the public eye, but even his developments with the various characters in the film abruptly shift with little to no evidence for the cause, and though a dramatic jolt four years forward, at the film’s midway point, is attempted justification for these shifts, the missing scenes obscured in transition lead to underdeveloped character motivations that definitely deserved the time to properly flesh out. The biggest example of this shifting is the arc between Bob and Pete, which one second feels sweetly charming as the teacher and student, but then violently shifts into resentful once the former desires branching out his musical capabilities. Even with folk music influencing Bob’s demeanor, I wish more time was spent establishing Pete’s position on such, as the third act unfairly outlines him on the antagonist side of the conflict, and as a result sacrifices the movie’s sentimentality subplot in ways that definitely deserved a scene before their eventual distancing, which ultimately deduces it to one of the many subplots that the storytelling continuously bounces to and from, when it so obviously deserved better. In addition to this, I feel the time is squeezed tight from the abundance of musical performances that directly halt the progress of the storytelling, especially within the movie’s opening hour, which I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 performances. While I expect music to be of relevance in a music biopic, it simply takes up too much of the film’s timing allowance, forcing the perfect alibi for the lack of exposition paid to the primary protagonist, which kept me from learning even a shred of anything new to Dylan. Finally, as previously established, the ensemble flourish with a trio of dazzling performances, but there’s one notable name that essentially just serves as a device driving most of Bob’s developments, and that’s Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo. While her character is based on Dylan’s real-life girlfriend and muse, Suze Rotolo, we never understand the significance to that level in this cinematic enveloping, as a result of being one of the many underdeveloped dynamics in the movie, affording Fanning very few scenes to show off any level of impressive dramatic range or integral value to the proceedings of Bob’s life that makes her turn so unfortunately forgettable compared to her counterparts.

OVERALL
‘A Complete Unknown’ strikes an infectious chord as another affectionately made biopic from James Mangold, who avoids all of the formulaic pitfalls while capturing the artistic impulses of the generational trailblazer deserving of the big screen treatment. While the script feels a bit too surface level and shallow to claim Oscar’s gold, resulting in too many established arcs without enough time to properly flesh them out, the real stage-stealer is Chalamet’s committed transformation as Dylan, who vocally and emotionally dismisses doubt with his single most demanding performance to date, worthy of an encore.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-