L. Kent: ‘A Complete Unknown’ captures the legend of Bob Dylan in the early ’60s
By L. KENT WOLGAMOTT – Lincoln Journal Star, Neb. (TNS)
In “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” a reporter famously says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” which is what director James Mangold, his co-writer Jay Cocks and his superb cast do with Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.”
Loosely based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, “Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Splits the Sixties,” the film follows Dylan from his 1961 arrival in New York City through his controversial “electric” performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that marked his break from folk and move into the realm of rock ’n’ roll.
It does so through tremendous performances by Timothee Chalamet as Dylan, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger — pencil those two in for Oscar nominations — Elle Fanning as Dylan’s girlfriend, Sylvie Russo, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.
Chalamet, Norton and Barbaro each resemble the people they are playing — an important element, at least for me, to buy into a biopic.
To wit, after I saw “A Complete Unknown,” I watched “Don’t Look Back,” D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary that followed Dylan’s 1965 tour of England.
Chalamet looks very much like that Dylan, speaks in Dylan fashion and impressively performs, singing and playing guitar, Dylan style. He clearly studied up, probably via this and a couple other concert films, and practiced for years to play the role.
The same holds true for Barbaro, who, much like Baez, has a clear, stunning soprano that blends and contrasts with Chalamet’s rawer tones on their duets.
The casting resemblances continue for Dylan’s gruff, bombastic manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), his running buddy/tour manager Bobby Neuwirth (Will Harrison) and, to some measure Dylan’s “pen pal” Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook).
And a bunch of minor characters, some who are never mentioned by name, also look like those they are playing: People like Greenwich Village folk mainstay Dave Van Ronk, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, and Al Kooper, whose legendary story adding the organ riff to “Like a Rolling Stone” when he didn’t know how to turn on the organ, is shown — in slightly altered form.
Film Review – A Complete Unknown
Edward Norton (left) as Pete Seeger and Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a scene from “A Complete Unknown.”
That’s because “A Complete Unknown” is a fictional film, not a documentary. Which means Dylanologists are certain to pick the picture apart, character by character and scene by scene.
Character-wise, the most notable departure is the name of Dylan’s girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who appeared with him on the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” She’s called Sylvie Russo in the film, at, according to Rolling Stone, Dylan’s request.
And, it should be noted, she’s very well played by Fanning as she first falls for the budding musician, helps to integrate him into the Village folk scene, then sees him betray her in an affair with Baez.
There are plenty of inaccuracies throughout the picture. To pick a couple of examples: Dylan didn’t meet Seeger at Woody Guthrie’s bedside in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital and he didn’t hook up with Baez for the first time after she stumbled into the basement club the Gaslight while he was playing “Masters of War” at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Plus the writing, recording sessions for and public performances of songs like “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Like A Rolling Stone” are often incorporated out of chronological order.
I’m a confessed Dylan obsessive. I’ve seen him about 20 times, have a shelf of Dylan books and dozens of CDs, including this year’s sold-out 27-disc set of live recordings from his 1974 tour (which doesn’t include the show I saw then). In 2023, I attended the World of Bob Dylan conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I visited, at length, the Bob Dylan Center and, on the same block, the Woody Guthrie Center.
Film Review – A Complete Unknown
Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a scene from “A Complete Unknown.”
I recount that to say that none of the inaccuracies that I picked up as the 2-hour, 20-minute picture played pulled me out of the movie.
That is until one of the legendary incidents in Dylan’s career was taken out of time to fit into its climactic moment — the 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance when Dylan and his group, that included Kooper and guitarist Mike Bloomfield, played three songs with electric guitars, bass and drums, violating as it were the sanctity of folk music purists.
In the film, a woman, distraught at the “electric” performance, screams “Judas” at the stage, earning a retort from Dylan.
In reality, “Judas” was screamed, not at Newport but, as can be heard on a “bootleg” recording, in 1966 at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. Dylan’s response there was “I don’t believe you … you’re a liar,” then turns to his backing band, soon to become The Band, and, famously, comes the instruction to “play it f****** loud.”
Understandably, the time shift of “Judas” was necessary to put a point on the overarching story of Dylan’s transformation from folkie to groundbreaking, literary rock ’n’ roller, seemingly betraying and thumbing his nose at the folk audience.
But, as the movie demonstrates, Dylan never considered himself as a pure folk musician, expressing his admiration for Little Richard and Buddy Holly. Nor was he the fabulist who rolled into New York with a made-up backstory of, among other exploits, working in a carnival.
Film Review – A Complete Unknown
Monica Barbaro and Timothee Chalamet as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in a scene from “A Complete Unknown.”
Rather, he was an ambitious, consumed songwriter and performer, who, again as the film effectively shows, used those around him — from Guthrie and Seeger to “Sylvie,” Baez and dozens of musicians and collaborators — in pursuit of his muse and fame and fortune.
All the while he did so while shrouding himself in mystery, never fully revealing much of anything while building his myth of the moment — be it as a Guthrie clone riding the folk music rails or the born-again Christian of the late ’70s, or today’s 83-year-old artist never looking back on a never-ending tour.
That had to have presented some serious challenges for Chalamet, who was charged with playing an enigmatic, but very public character.
Chalamet, however, manages to fully inhabit and convey some things about Dylan circa the early 1960s. But, in the end, after the excellent, absorbing film, the books, the documentaries and the records, the chameleon-like Dylan, arguably the most influential musical artist of the past 60 years, remains “A Complete Unknown.”
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