Elle Fanning, left, as Sylvie Russo and Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan take a motorcycle ride to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, a fictitious scene in “A Complete Unknown.” Credit: Searchlight Pictures via TNS
As superhero movies take a backseat in popularity due to cultural burnout from their formulaic structure, the biopic has leapt to fill the void of easily consumable films that can still be loaded to the brink with star power.
As a consequence, studios birth movies like “A Complete Unknown,” which sees Timothée Chalamet (“Dune 2”) don Bob Dylan’s iconic sunglasses and too-small jacket and step to the stage to perform renditions of the legendary singer-songwriter’s most iconic and divisive work.
Despite early fears Chalamet wasn’t the right choice to portray Dylan, he replicates Dylan’s idiosyncrasies about as well as one could have hoped. In particular, his vocal performances do sound pretty darn accurate to Dylan’s famously nasal voice.
But Chalamet doesn’t have to carry the burden of star power alone. He’s joined by a flurry of talented actors playing talented real-world musicians, such as Edward Norton (“Fight Club”) as the mellow folk singer Pete Seeger and Boyd Holbrook — who audiences might be familiar with as the villain in this film’s director James Mangold’s “Logan,” — is a scene-stealer in his limited appearances as Johnny Cash.
“A Complete Unknown” leans heavily on the immortal power of Dylan’s musical genius, forgoing a typical movie structure for extended performances of Chalamet recreating Dylan’s songs.
Though most Hollywood movies are structured around the central wants and needs of a main hero, Dylan is portrayed as a flippant, too-cool-for-school protagonist, which means his goals aren’t ever clearly defined beyond simply wanting to improve his art.
Instead, most of the movie’s highlights come when Dylan’s most recognizable songs are performed and audiences can reminisce on the good ol’ days listening to his actual tracks.
If there were an obvious goal for Dylan in the movie, it would be his desire to want to grow, change and defy artistical norms, which causes disruptions in his relationships with women throughout his life, challenging him both romantically and artistically.
The women in question include Elle Fanning (“Super 8”) in a breakthrough role as Dylan’s kind-hearted girlfriend Sylvie Russo and Monica Barbaro (“Top Gun: Maverick”) as Joan Baez, a legendary folk artist in her own right who is also entangled with Dylan.
It’s with these personal relationships that “A Complete Unknown” has the most actual narrative, as the audience gets to see a villainous-like descent from Dylan due to his stubborn insistence on acting the way he likes and playing the kind of music he wants to play.
“A Complete Unknown” is a fairly formulaic adaptation of the life of one of the least formulaic humans of all time. Its dialogue and quiet moments are often lost under the strums of electric guitars and blaring of recorders — if ever a movie needed subtitles, it’s this one.
Where it succeeds, though, is highlighting the sheer influence and once-in-a-generation talent of Dylan. Although at times “A Complete Unknown” argues that Dylan was a bit of a womanizer or even a bad friend, by leaning so heavily on Dylan’s music, it also contends that this art may be worth separating from the artist.
Rating: 3.5/5
