A Complete Unknown (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

It Ain't Me, Bob

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

James Mangold's Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is ostensibly all about a game-changing event in the career of its subject, but it's really a long, familiar origin story, albeit boosted by fantastic performances and stellar music.

A young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) makes his way across New York to the hospital where his idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who struggles with a neurodegenerative disease, is staying. He comes across Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), also visiting Woody. Bob performs a song for them, and Pete decides to let Bob crash at his place while he helps introduce the youngster into the world of established folk singers.

He woos Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and forms a hot-and-cold relationship with her. He also meets Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and they begin performing amazing duets. He achieves stratospheric fame with anthems like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'." But when he's invited to play the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, there have been rumblings that Bob has moved on from traditional folk to electric rock, including a full band. When he takes the stage, history is made.

Bob Dylan is a notoriously reticent figure, and no movie or book about him has ever been able to get inside his head or to touch his genius. A Complete Unknown barely even tries. Director James Mangold previously made the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, which was subsequently parodied (brilliantly) by Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

And yet, this new movie still returns to that same tired biopic formula, skimming over the years, looking at what happened with little effort spent on why things happened. (In one scene, Bob and Sylvie watch the TV news about the Kennedy assassination, for no other reason than to mark the date.) It might have been more useful or interesting to simply cut to the chase and get to the show.

That said, the work that Chalamet has put into becoming Bob Dylan is beyond reproach. It's not just a canny imitation, it's a look inside the musician's brain; we can see his wheels turning, even if the miracles seem to emerge, fully-formed, from virtually nowhere. Norton has also completely transformed into Pete Seeger, a man of an earlier generation that is surpassed by the younger. And Fanning is ferocious as Sylvie, who tries harder than anyone to crack Bob's facade.

The climax, at Newport, is undeniably "electric," for want of a better word, and well worth waiting for. If A Complete Unknown had spent more time on why this moment was important or controversial and less time on the long buildup, then we might have had something great, rather than something great-adjacent.