A Complete Unknown (2024) Searchlight/Drama-Musical RT: 141 minutes Rated R (language) Director: James Mangold Screenplay: James Mangold and Jay Cocks Music: Steven Gizicki (supervisor) Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael Release date: December 25, 2024 (US) Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Scott McNairy, Dan Folger, Norbert Leo Butz, P.J. Byrne, Will Harrison, Eriko Hatsune, Charlie Tahan, Ryan Harris Brown, Eli Brown, Nick Pupo, Big Bill Morganfield.
Rating: ****
The Christmas movie season gets a lot merrier with A Complete Unknown, a compelling biopic of Bob Dylan, one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of the 20th century. It hasn’t been the best year for musical biopics with disappointing films about Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse. A Complete Unknown more than makes up for them. It helps greatly that it’s directed by James Mangold who did right by Johnny Cash with Walk the Line nearly 20 years ago. Can you believe it’s been that long?
I’ll tell you what else makes A Complete Unknown great, Timothee Chalamet. He plays Bob Dylan brilliantly. It’s a transformative performance much like Val Kilmer’s turn as Jim Morrison in The Doors or more recently, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. The film follows Dylan from his arrival in New York City in 1961. He’s come to meet his idol Woody Guthrie (McNairy, Speak No Evil), recently hospitalized with Huntington’s disease. It’s there he meets folk singer Pete Seeger (Norton, The People vs. Larry Flynt) who takes the 20YO into his home and under his wing.
Over the next few years, Dylan climbs the ladder of stardom as a folk singer. He likes the success, but what he really wants is artistic freedom. He wants to try other things, but everybody has him pigeonholed as a folk singer. During this time, he becomes involved with two women. He starts a romantic relationship with Sylvie Russo (Fanning, Maleficent) who tries in vain to understand the man she loves. He won’t let her in. His relationship with fellow singer Joan Baez (Barbaro, Top Gun: Maverick) is both professional and personal. They sing well together, but he ends up alienating her too.
A Complete Unknown ends with Dylan’s infamous performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he introduces his new electric sound to a less than receptive crowd. It’s a powerful moment in that it defines who Dylan came to be as a musician, a rebel who danced to his own beat. As played by Chalamet, he remains as enigmatic as ever. We never learn about his childhood or upbringing. We know nothing of his past other than his stories of working at a carnival. Dylan keeps everything close to his chest. He literally is a complete unknown. Chalamet absolutely crushes it. I see an Oscar nomination in his near future.
A nomination might also be in the cards for Norton and his wonderfully understated performance as Seeger, one of Dylan’s staunchest supporters. Barbaro is great as Joan Baez, a serious sort who comes to resent Dylan’s attitude towards the music their fans love. She perfectly captures how people who knew Dylan were equally enraptured and enraged by him. The scene where he walks off the stage rather than sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” is another defining moment. Fanning, whose character is actually based on Suze Rotolo, the girl on the cover of his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, does fine work as well. Her frustration is palpable. Boyd Holbrook (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) plays Johnny Cash with a hint of mischievousness. Really, all of the acting here is terrific.
A Complete Unknown takes the road less travelled in Hollywood biopics. Instead of a greatest hits compilation giving us the bullet points of its subject’s life, it shows us Dylan’s formative period, the years that shaped him as an artist. Additionally, Mangold lets us hear entire songs rather than just snippets. We get to see Dylan sing and perform which lends more gravitas than any amount of written dialogue. His music had a lot of say about the turbulent times he was living in. He’s in a club singing “Masters of War” while clips of the Cuban Missile Crisis play on TV. Moments like this place Dylan’s songs in a greater context. Oh, it should be noted that Chalamet does all his own singing. He crushes that too.
Mangold presents A Complete Unknown with no fancy stylistic flourishes or wild overediting. He does it old school which perfectly suits the material. It feels completely authentic to its time and place, the early 60s NYC folk scene. Like its subject, A Complete Unknown drifts along at its own pace, allowing us to take in the legend that is Bob Dylan and his freewheeling spirit. While we don’t know him any better on a personal level, we get to see the genius behind the music that helped define a generation. This is one of the year’s best films.
