‘A Complete Unknown’
Bob Dylan’s life was eccentric & electric, but unfortunately James Mangold falls short of translating that to the big screen.
Whether you like him or not, it is undeniable that Bob Dylan’s folk music created astronomical waves across the world. He’s known most for his songwriting - even winning a Nobel Prize in Poetry – as well as his enigmatic and elusive personality. As he quickly gained his much sought after stardom, he shifted focus to create music with a political message and, of course, went electric. His career has been closely followed by many critics and fans alike, with a lot of people having a very sincere connection to his music. So, as you can imagine, this biopic was met with a lot of worry over whether director James Mangold and the actor chosen to play Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) would do him justice.
A Complete Unknown follows Dylan’s life from his rise to fame up until he goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival (1961-1965); if you are like me and have no prior knowledge of Bob Dylan, him not performing with an acoustic guitar was met with much abjection due to the divide of rock and folk music at the time. The film is essentially leading to this climactic ending, with most of the film containing discussion about this decision. Prior to that though, the film features about forty of Dylan’s songs which makes it more of a toned-down musical than a straightforward biopic. In saying that, it still is a very formulaic movie, almost to its fault. He had a fast-moving career which is hard to capture in the confines of a film and while A Complete Unknown stretches over two hours, it still doesn’t seem to hit the beats it should.
What Mangold does a good job of is portraying Dylan’s complicated love life with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). This is probably the aspect I was most invested in, and if this film didn’t feature the complexities of this love triangle it would have been much more unbearable. There are moments between the three of these characters that are gut-wrenching to watch, and there’s a moment of this triangle towards the end that nearly brought me to tears; for fans of Dylan, it’s that performance of ‘The Times They are Changing’. Fanning does an excellent job of playing the shoved aside girlfriend of the asshole musician, and Barbaro is tremendous as the other woman. She brings an air of independence and strength to that character trope that is amazing to watch. All parties are doing a terrific job with the mediocre script they’ve been given, especially the man himself, Timothee Chalamet
Performing all songs himself, Chalamet transforms into Dylan in a fascinating way. Not only does he sound almost identical to Dylan, but he is also able to portray he discreet nature of Dylan’s early career all the way to the arrogance that formed towards the end. His portrayal comments on the intersection between art and fame, and how clear it was that Dylan has such a fractured relationship with this. Any biopic relies on a strong leading performance to succeed, but A Complete Unknown has far too many flaws for it to rely solely on Chalamet.
Mangold spends a lot of valuable time showing his audience how much people admired Dylan. There are countless shots of people gazing at him with wonder in their eyes, but beyond that there’s not a great amount of examination into his magnetism as a person and artist; something that begs to be explored. I also would have loved to see Mangold tap into Dylan’s genius as a songwriter. We don’t see his process; we more just see events unfold and his response to them in musical form. These issues make the film disjointed in its focus and makes for an overall poorly directed film.
As you might be able to tell, I’m not a fan of James Mangold & this film cements why. It’s unnecessarily long and drawn out with not much to grab onto. Bob Dylan’s life was mythological and at the same time quite simple, yet Mangold makes it look, well, boring. Part of me feels like a Dylan biopic deserved a more ‘arthouse’ director that was willing to make this more abstract as opposed to your typical beat by beat story – a la ‘I’m Not There’. There are a lot of attempts to document the sprawling life of Dylan, but I regret to say that besides the stellar performances, A Complete Unknown just doesn’t work.
A Complete Unknown is in Australian cinemas on January 23rd!
