One of the year’s heavyweight music biopics has lurched its way onto screens in the UK. Following 2005’s Walk the Line, director James Mangold has churned out a second contribution to what has rapidly become a tired genre chock-filled with cliches, flavour-of-the-month actors, and structural predictability. A Complete Unknown chronicles the four years between a young Bob Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 and his seismic rock and roll performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Viewers may earnestly hope that an artist as enigmatic, stylistically varied and genuinely influential as Dylan – as well as a pantheon of supporting folk-rock legends – might provide the perfect catalyst to give the biopic something of a jolt. Unfortunately, despite some endearing performances and generous lashings of early sixties style, Mangold’s film is a flimsy, lacklustre offering.
Chalamet has consistently referenced what he calls “the church of Bob” throughout his press tour for the film. He seems genuinely enamoured when he speaks about Dylan – having been the recipient of some rare public praise from the singer-songwriter on X recently. Chalamet cites Dylan’s acidic, 1965 rendition of Ballad of a Thin Man at the Manchester Free Trade Hall as the recording which gave him a way into playing the young artist. Unfortunately, his performance only gestures flittingly towards the unbridled creative spirit which characterises Dylan’s mid-sixties electric work. Having rejected the opportunity to work with voice and dialect coaches, opting for what he calls a more “instinctual, […] from the soul” process, Chalamet’s portrayal succeeds neither as an effective imitation or as a psychologically well-developed depiction. Dylan’s distinctive voice – defined, due to a pronounced case of bronchitis, by its aged hoarseness – feels entirely sanitised in the film. A Complete Unknown more broadly paints Dylan as politically ambivalent, petulant and socially disengaged. His performance – aged just 22 – at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, for example, is lightly skimmed over despite being one of the defining political moments of his early career.
A Complete Unknown never really succeeds in making the most of Dylan’s early back catalogue. Chalamet’s rendition of Fixin’ to Die is a rare moment where the film effectively captures the sparky, forceful vocal style which defined the troubadour’s ill-fated first record, however we are never afforded enough time and space to contemplate the failure of that first album as a pivotal moment in Dylan’s embryonic career. The pitfall is merrily skipped past so as to neatly conform with the conventionally understood biopic formula and other songs merely serve as vehicles for poorly written moments of exposition. In the case of Dylan’s epochal Freewheelin’ LP, one of the film’s most egregious failings rears its head. Joan Baez – introduced as a major narrative player during a rendition of Masters of War – is written, despite her own status as a Bonafide American folk legend, exclusively as a dithering love interest for Chalamet. A Complete Unknown concludes with (as all biopics must), a “where are they now” slideshow which defines Baez’s later career her entirely in terms of her relationship with Dylan. It all feels flimsy, slight and old-fashioned. Speaking purely musically, the live performance of Like a Rolling Stone at Newport feels small and dainty compared to the heavy, brooding sound which Dylan injected into the festival in 1965. The early punk-rock aesthetics which Dylan created during this performance seem to be entirely lost on Mangold’s retelling.
Mangold’s version of the Newport gig entirely sums up the problem with A Complete Unknown. It all just feels small. Pete Seeger – despite the best efforts of Edward Norton, who easily provides the film’s strongest performance – is reduced from his status as one of the American folk movement’s most vocal, socially conscious, forward-thinking generals to an old-fashioned dinosaur. The film does him, and Norton’s performance, a disservice. Similarly, Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo (based on Dylan’s former partner Suze Rotolo), serves no narrative purpose beyond that of the tearful love interest, shunted off – literally and figuratively – to the wings. All of her own distinct artistry and politics, alluded to in a first act which is decidedly the film’s best, dissipate as things become ever more structurally predictable.
If a biopic about perhaps the 20th century’s most significant popular artist giving what may well have been the period’s defining musical performance cannot spark any sense of play, intelligence or mystery, maybe it is time to shelve the genre for good.
Author: Nathan Harris [he/him] [Instagram: nathanharris_1]
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