Portrait of a young Bob Dylan

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Coming next on The World and Everything in It… WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has a review of that Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

[Bob singing]

COLLIN GARBARINO: Director James Mangold achieved critical acclaim with his biopics Walk the Line and Ford v Ferrari. His new movie, A Complete Unknown, is about Bob Dylan’s early career, loosely adapting Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! Viewers get a glimpse into the life of the only songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the music scene that he reshaped.

The film takes place over the four years between Dylan’s arrival in New York City in 1961 and his controversial set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. During this brief timespan, Dylan went from being “a complete unknown” to a cultural icon whose mere presence could elicit shrieks from young female fans. Tousle-haired Timothée Chalamet offers a gifted, understated performance as Dylan. He even does his own singing throughout the film.

[Singing]

The film begins with Dylan making a pilgrimage of sorts to Greystone Park Hospital to visit his idol Woody Guthrie who’s suffering from Huntington's disease. While visiting Guthrie, Dylan meets fellow folk singer Pete Seeger who takes the young “Bobby” under his wing.

PETE SEEGER: You think of yourself as a folk musician now though, yeah?

BOB DYLAN: I don’t think to myself as a folk singer, you know… this folk music thing. I mean, I do sing folk music when I do it’s sort of a modified version.

Ed Norton gives a phenomenal performance as Seeger, and he too does all his own singing. Seeger introduces Dylan to New York’s folk scene, and it doesn’t take long for people to notice Dylan’s genius. One of those people is Joan Baez with whom he strikes up a romantically charged collaboration.

Another is Sylvie Russo, played by Elle Fanning. She’s a lightly fictionalized version of Dylan’s girlfriend at the time who can be seen clinging to him on the album cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Sylvie works as an activist, and after meeting Bobby at a church concert, she begins to look upon him as another cause that needs her attention.

SYLVIE: There’s a lot I want. You do too. You’re ambitious. I think that scares you.

Part of the plot revolves around the Sylvie-Bob-Joan love triangle. But the film isn’t primarily driven by Dylan’s love of women. It’s driven by his passion for music.

Throughout the film’s 2-hour-and-20-minute runtime, the young troubadour constantly scribbles in notebooks and feels out chord changes as he works on new songs. His genius comes from a fearless dedication to his craft, and he craves songs with feeling. At one point, he calls Baez’s songs “too pretty.” It seems as though he’s flirting with the more established folk singer, but he’s actually offering a real critique.

BOB DYLAN: You try too hard. To write.

JOAN BAEZ: Really?

BOB DYLAN: Yeah. If you’re asking.

JOAN BAEZ: I wasn’t.

Chalamet’s Dylan doesn’t mince words when he speaks his mind. Yes, he’s a genius, but he’s also a little bit of a jerk.

The film is rated R for bad language and near constant cigarette smoking. But it’s a fairly mild R. The language isn’t pervasive, and director Mangold shows admirable restraint in depicting Dylan’s love life.

We never really see the true Dylan. But that’s sort of the point. The movie plays fast and loose with the facts, but the real Bob Dylan’s been lying about his past for his whole career. The film’s title comes from the song “Like a Rolling Stone.” And it’s a good metaphor for the enigmatic bard. He’s inventing and reinventing himself, and we get the sense that in 1961 not even Bob Dylan knew who he really was.

The young Dylan longs to live free from the expectations of others. He finds himself in a perverse situation—wanting to be known, while at the same time wanting to hide himself from fans and friends alike. The more he feels the world is constraining him, the more he wants to escape, even though he doesn’t know what he wants to escape to. It’s not long before Dylan feels that folk music itself has become too constraining.

BOB DYLAN: You know, I sent you an advance of my new record.

PETE SEEGER: Sure. Yeah. I got it.

BOB DYLAN: Did you ever listen to the music you’re telling me not to play?

A Complete Unknown shows how Dylan almost single handedly reshaped the American music landscape, and part of the film’s genius is that it deftly uses the songs to help tell the story. In the 1950s, folk music was considered subversive: a man or woman alone with a guitar speaking truth to power. Folk musicians believed their social movement, much of it tinged with socialism, derived moral authority by singing songs of the people in a stripped down style. In the 21st century, it’s easy to forget “This Land Is Your Land” was a protest song.

All of this leads to his controversial electric set at the Newport Folk Festival.

ORGANIZER: I hear Bob is playing electric now.

ALAN LOMAX: Not on our stage he isn’t. There is no rock ‘n’ roll in Newport.

PETE SEEGER: There is no need to be dogmatic.

The film sets up the true-believing soft-spoken Seeger as the foil to Dylan, who is less interested in social justice than he is in his art. Dylan’s mercurial personality and musical experimentation were seen as a betrayal by the folk music scene that had made him a star. The folk establishment had no idea that “the times they are a changin’.”

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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