Simply put, Chalamet shines in this picture: he is truly the star of the 2020s, having shown a diverse range through his filmography. The next character in his repertoire is a difficult one to pin down: mercurial genius, Bob Dylan and his nasal, Americana tones.
Dylan’s discography can be intimidating, to say the least. With 40 studio albums and 21 live albums, not to mention a vast sea of singles, bootlegs, and EPs, a deeper dive into his work can seem like an insurmountable task.
A Complete Unknown centres around Dylan’s early career, his relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). The biopic is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric, sharing the sparkling finale of Dylan ‘going electric’ at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
The picture opens with Dylan visiting Guthrie in his hospital bed. Guthrie, a folk hero and fervent antifascist, is in palliative care for Huntington’s’ disease – portrayed superbly by McNairy. Their scenes together are brilliant, with Chalamet capturing the hurt and intensity of meeting a dying hero with aplomb. There is some initial whiplash when coming to terms with Chalamet’s ‘Dylan voice’, but you can quickly get into the grove here: it speaks volumes to Chalamet’s talent that his vocal work is so easy to buy into – he sings and plays everything as live.
The story weaves through Dylan’s growth from folk impresario to blues rock pioneer: early on, Ed Norton’s Pete Seegar interrogates Dylan’s musical allegiance – folk or rock. The scene is something of Checkov’s Fender guitar, but it does well to lay down the main conflict in the film. Perhaps it’s a little hamfisted to Dylan aficionados, but it makes the film’s major theme accessible to those less versed in Dylan’s history.
A Complete Unknown does well to evoke the period: cars, fashion building fronts advertisements and everything in between are so quintessential of the time. New York utterly glows in its mid-century milieu, and you get lost in the cafes and bars brimming with beatniks and creatives: poetry, folk and thick cigarette smoke pours from the city, it evokes a deep-rooted sense of the creative, almost revolutionary scene that Dylan’s success was bourne from.
Chalamet soundtracks the whole picture as Dylan, which not only further speaks to Chalamet’s commitment to the role, but it enshrines the sheer pervasive quality of Dylan’s musicality. Every Dylan tune in the film is eminently repeatable, supremely catchy and downright brilliant. From the powerful scene of Dylan performing ‘Blowin In The Wind’ to Guthrie (using Woody’s iconic ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ acoustic’) to Dylan storming off stage at a show with Baez, because of the crowd’s demands to hear the hit.
A thorough line of the entire piece is artistic integrity. Dylan subverts throughout, going against the crowd and refusing to play ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ to defy the wishes of Newport Folk Festival’s kingmakers. This integrity of Dylan can come off as selfish, especially when you view how his relationships are portrayed, but it conveys the sense of ‘music above all’.
The finale of the film is Newport Folk Festival in ‘65 – the whole piece is wonderful as it details Dylan’s choice to electrify his set and the howling reactions of Newport’s folk purists. With some help from Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash (an inimitably charming shit-stirrer throughout), Dylan defies the folk tastemakers. The scene is exactly as described, electrifying: when Dylan shoots out a hand to grab the Fender, choosing it over an acoustic Gibson, I felt the crackle of electricity: it is an awe-inspiring moment of music in cinema.
There are inaccuracies and the real-life events have been twisted to better fit a cinematic narrative. Still, all this flies out the window when you watch Chalament as Dylan tears through the electric set at Newport. The sense of freedom is palpable, and the way he is unshackled from the folk purists is exceptional: the set gives birth to the generational record, Highway 61 Revisited.
A Complete Unknown’s masterstroke is how it shows music is a force, a weapon for change. Watching him tear through ‘The Times They Are a-Changing’ is spinetingling in its loaded subtext, the bittersweet harmonies between Chalamet and Baez (who goes toe to toe with Chalamet throughout) are packed with tempestuous tension. A Complete Unknown is a new watermark for musical cinema.
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