Fair warning: your mileage may vary, depending on your relationship to the music of Bob Dylan. James Mangold‘s long-gestating “A Complete Unknown” leans heavily on Dylan’s early music and has the power of an origin myth as it lets us rediscover his extraordinary ’60s songbook.
Star Timothée Chalamet is sexily convincing as the prolific singer-songwriter, without trying to be ingratiating — worth remembering: he did not treat the women in his life well. At one point, he wakes up the sleeping Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) as he composes on his guitar in her hotel room, and seems surprised when she orders him to “Get out!”
Chalamet maintains Dylan’s inexpressive mystery, while fully expressing himself in the songs. The actor carried his guitar around on other films for five years while he practiced his finger-picking, Mangold said at the post-screening Q&A at Los Angeles’ packed Zanuck Theater on Wednesday night.
The film played well for the Academy and guilds audience on hand. Actors will admire not only Chalamet (who also gives another strong movie star performance in “Dune: Part Two”) but the steely soprano Barbaro, vulnerable Elle Fanning as a fictionalized version of Suze Rotolo, and Edward Norton as Dylan’s angelic mentor Pete Seeger, who also sings and masters the banjo.
Judging from some of the reactions from early screenings, not everyone will rave over Mangold’s update of Jay Cocks’ script, which was all music, adapted from “Going Electric“ by Elijah Wald. Mangold added more material about Dylan to go between the songs, but finally the movie’s narrative is centered on the amazing music he delivered in this intense four-year period, leading to a big blowout at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Yes, readers, it was a huge deal at the time.
I grew up in the ’60s in New York City, so my immersion in Mangold’s recreation of the period was complete. I know the songs by heart, and watched Dylan transform himself over and over across the decades again until the magic was gone. (His 2009 Christmas album marked an enormous betrayal.)
Expect the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes to support the drama, while year-end critics groups are more likely to head toward such film festival winners as “Anora,” “Emilia Pérez,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “The Brutalist,” and “All We Imagine as Light.” Box office, plus guild and BAFTA nominations will also tell the tale of how far this very American movie will go.
Searchlight Pictures releases “A Complete Unknown” in theaters on December 25.
