‘A Complete Unknown’ Review – Timothée Chalamet Shines In Slight But Revealing Bob Dylan Biopic

In truth, James Mangold’s approach to Bob Dylan is in the name.

A Complete Unknown follows Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet, and his early days in New York, where he caught the eyes and ears of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and a hospitalized Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). Dylan was quickly championed as the future of folk music by Seeger and Dylan’s record label, and his rise to notoriety and popularity was swift. Along the way, he finds romantic partners in Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and fellow folk artist Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with whom he also frequently collaborates. What soon becomes clear to them and his ardent fanbase is that Dylan’s enigmatic persona is not so much personality management as it is plain old fact. Dylan bristles at the attempts by others to box him in, from his musical interests to his romantic life. 

That central tension shapes A Complete Unknown and Mangold’s aim in exploring Dylan. Mangold doesn’t strive for much interiority or insight into who Dylan is or is believed to be behind his guitar and trademark black glasses. The most that the screenplay, which Mangold co-wrote with Jay Cocks, intuits is that Dylan was, as Joan Baez puts it, “an asshole” in his relationships. We see how that behavioral bug (or, possibly, feature) impacts his inner circle. Baez is frustrated by Dylan popping in and out of her life but can’t deny their romantic and musical chemistry. Sylvie Russo is also frustrated by how little Dylan opens up to her about much of anything. Pete Seeger’s frustrations with Dylan are more professional than personal. Seeger sees Dylan as the great young hope of folk music, but Dylan risks that vision by incorporating blues and rock ‘n’ roll into his recordings. 

While we get clear reads on how Dylan affects those around him, Dylan himself remains opaque. There are few standout moments of introspection about himself, his work, or how his evolving circumstances shape said work. In most cases, that would leave a biopic feeling frustratingly short thrift. A Complete Unknown, on the other hand, moves handily along without it. Mangold musters a lot of energy from Dylan’s performances, as small as his first show at a New York bar to as large as the Newport Music Festival. He has a strong command of what those performances mean to Dylan and his audiences and captures them accordingly, resulting in the film’s strongest moments. One such moment is when Sylvie watches Dylan and Baez performing on stage, no longer able to deny the comingling of their professional and personal relationships. 

Dylan’s controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Festival is an even stronger moment, where he performed new songs with electric instruments and infuriated an audience that had demanded “Blowin’ In The Wind.” Mangold stages a tense, gripping scene where he makes you wonder if Dylan misjudged the power of his mythology and would end up derailing his career as penance. That doesn’t happen since, after all, this film exists. Still, you feel the audience’s rancor as strongly as Dylan’s perseverance through it. That scene effectively encapsulates what allowed Dylan to endure as a musician and cultural figure for the past half-century. His strength lies in his refusal to adhere to convention, regardless of the risks. That’s less of an insight into Dylan than it is into the rigidity of American popular culture, but it is compelling nonetheless.

The film’s narrow insight into Dylan doesn’t hamper Timothée Chalamet’s performance. He’s excellent, disappearing into the persona and adopting Dylan’s trademarks without slipping into caricature. If you are unfamiliar with Dylan or his music, Chalamet’s approach offers a strong spark of interest. He adopts Dylan’s phrasing so well that you may want to throw on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan to compare. The role also serves Chalamet’s gifts well, with his final moment with Guthrie after Newport being one of his best moments on screen to date. His surrounding cast is just as strong. Edward Norton’s gentle, open-hearted take on Seeger is a great counterpoint to Chalamet’s distance. Monica Barbaro is as well, albeit as a steely force who fearlessly pushes back against Dylan’s cold treatment. Elle Fanning is more vulnerable but equally as compelling, yearning beautifully for more than Dylan is able or willing to give Sylvie. 

A Complete Unknown reinforces Bob Dylan as an enigma and iconoclast by staying relatively close to the surface. To Mangold’s credit, the film doesn’t feel deficient or frustrating in its lack of insight, thanks to his dedicated focus on Dylan’s impact. What makes the film interesting is what it says about us as an entertainment-loving public. Do we want artists who reinforce or challenge our tastes? If we look at the Newport Festival appearance, the answer would seem to be the former. And yet, as the film explains in an epilogue, the album born from that experience, Highway 61 Revisited, is one of the most well-regarded in music history. As he was for his loved ones, Mangold suggests that Dylan best serves as a mirror reflecting our aspirations and limits. He may always be a complete unknown to us, but that may very well be the point.

A Complete Unknown will debut exclusively in theaters on December 25, 2024, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.