‘Go track some mud on somebody’s carpet. Make some noise…’
While I adored Bob Dylan growing up, I rarely return to his music now. I think that people often start with the greats, but then they move on to stuff that is perhaps more relevant to their own time period. And so it is with Dylan and me. There is also the thorny issue of whether he is someone who deserves our admiration or not. He is famously grumpy, butchers his own songs when playing live and gives deliberately obtuse answers on the rare occasions on which he is interviewed. James Mangold isn’t really interested in whether we like Dylan or not (neither is Dylan himself, it must be said), instead providing us with a snapshot of Dylan’s early career culminating in his infamous appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Like Dylan’s music, it’s often brilliant, sometimes frustrating, but always interesting…
We begin with Dylan (Timothy Chalamet) taking a pilgrimage to meet his hero, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who lives in a special hospital and is slowly dying from Huntington’s disease. While at the hospital, Dylan befriends protest singer Pete Seeger (Ed Norton), and the foundations are laid for the beginnings of a legend. Later, Dylan has on/off relationships with Sylvie Russo (based on real-life figure Suze Rotolo and played here by Elle Fanning) and fellow folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).
I’ve been sceptical of Chalamet in the past, and I’m still not convinced he’ll ever be one of the greats, as he himself suggested he aspires to be at the recent SAG awards, but he captures the essence of Dylan here better than anyone else has before. Director James Mangold has form in this area, having already coaxed an Oscar-winning performance out of Joaquin Phoenix in his portrayal of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, and director and star combine in A Complete Unknown to accurately depict Dylan in all of his beautiful complexity. Having said that, this is very much an ensemble effort, with Barbaro and, particularly Norton both outstanding. Indeed, the latter threatens to steal the whole movie away from Chalamet, and there is a nagging feeling that a movie about Pete Seeger starring Norton would actually be the more interesting project.
A Complete Unknown never threatens to reinvent the wheel, but it is an extremely competent retelling of one of the most significant events in the history of modern music – essential viewing for Dylan fans.
