A Complete Unknown
Just another biopic
Last Christmas, or more accurately the strange liminal time between Christmas and the New Year, I was faced with a decision. My birthday is on December 30th, and being home with my movie-obsessed family, we followed the birthday tradition of going see the film of my choice in the theater. Being one of the weaker December slates in recent years, the choice essentially boiled down to either Nosferatu or A Complete Unknown. Reading the room and knowing no one else would care for a nearly two-and-a-half hour Bob Dylan biopic, I chose Nosferatu.
It was an… interesting experience, to put it mildly. On its own, I adored the film, but sitting in tight theater seats, packed between my mother and my brother, as Lily Rose-Depp stares into the camera and says lines straight out of a cuckold porno is not exactly the way I imagined my birthday going. (I fell victim to my policy of knowing as little about a film as possible before I see it.)
However, the one thing to be said for the Nosferatu choice on this occasion is that at least everyone was wide awake. Had I chosen A Complete Unknown, I don’t think any of us would have stayed conscious for the film’s duration.
Set between 1961 and 1965, A Complete Unknown follows a young Bob Dylan as he arrives in New York, visits his ailing idol Woody Guthrie, and is welcomed into the Greenwich Village folk scene by Pete Seeger. Supported by manager Albert Grossman and romantically entangled with Sylvie Russo and Joan Baez, Dylan grapples with commercial constraints and artistic integrity. The film culminates with his bold and controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, signaling a seismic shift in his career.
Unknown follows the same, tired formula of all music biopics. It’s more well-made than Bohemian Rapsody, but it’s far less interesting or engaging than Rocketman. It sits in the in-between space where, sure, it’s a technically sound film, but it’s also unbelievably dull. At least Rapsody was so bad that you couldn’t take your eyes off the screen.
The film lacks any real moments of substance, instead just sailing along like the “early years” section of Dylan’s Wikipedia page. It’s more of a series of events than a real examination of Dylan as a person. It also does what seemingly every modern film based on a IP does, focus more on fan-service and “hey, it’s that guy!” moments than story or character. It feels less jarring in other rock biopics, but in this film about poets and folk singers, it stands out like a sore thumb. Johnny Cash is introduced like he’s a new superhero in a Marvel movie. (Although, Boyd Holbrook’s portrayal of Cash is one of the better aspects of the film.)
I’m admittedly a newer convert to the discipleship of Dylan, so I’m not the one to bemoan historical inaccuracies, but a quick google search tells you it’s littered with them.
I am, however, a longtime disciple of The Band, and am more than qualified to bemoan the ridiculousness of a film centered around Dylan going electric that stops short of his time with Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel. Instead of the slow process of gaining support show-by-show, the film suggests that Dylan simply converted the folk scene to embrace his electric transition in the span of three songs at the Newport Folk Festival. (The group was also with Dylan at the time of his career-altering 1966 motorcycle crash, another vital point that occurs just months after the film decides to stop in its tracks.)
Unknown is so deeply unsatisfying because, to make another analogy to the superhero genre, it’s an origin story where the film ends right as we meet the character we recognize. Dylan is not an artist who was interesting just at the beginning of his run, only to fade into mediocrity. Instead, his career gets arguably more fascinating in the years that follow 1965.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a letdown if the story wasn’t told in such a paint-by-numbers fashion, and if the performances weren’t so bland. Dylan’s romances with both Baez and Russo hold little weight, partially because of the script and partially because Elle Fanning seems to be phoning it in as Russo, Timothee Chalamet is occasionally Dylan but often just just Chalamet, and while Monica Barbaro is solid in her role as Baez, she also can’t create chemistry that isn’t reciprocated.
I’m an ardent Chalamet supporter. I love how much he cares about his art, I love his passion for a perennially bad sports team like the Knicks, and I want him to succeed. Like Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio before him, he’s in that early part of his career where his stardom has moved faster than his acting chops. It’s not to say he’s not a great actor, but he’s yet to hit that level where he can do it all. He was great in Beautiful Boy and Call Me By Your Name where he’s essentially playing a version of himself, and Dune, where the sheer cast and level of filmmaking elevates him. Here, however, where he’s asked to both carry a film on his shoulders and transform into another person, you can see the holes that still need to be filled.
As negative as my thoughts on the film are, I’ll end on a positive note. Every biopic I see, good or bad, kickstarts an interest in the subject, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people.
My recent Dylan fascination was spurred on by a good friend in Prague who has been preaching to me about Dylan’s greatness at every opportunity, so after spending most of my life writing him off as some faux philosopher, I’ve finally at the moment of deep-diving into his work, beyond the surface of simply Hurricane in Dazed and Confused and that parody scene in Walk Hard.
I wish A Complete Unknown were a better film, but if, through Chalamet’s name on the marquee, it introduced a new generation to Dylan and Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, then I’m glad it exists. Like Seeger, I hold the earnest and idealistic view that folk music matters, and even the old songs we’ve been singing for decades can still teach us about ourselves and the world around us. The film may feel bland, but the songs are important, and I hope people watched this and went back to listen to those songs.
-Kuba
