Emma Shortall discusses the booming ballads and historical musical events that shape James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, a biopic about Bob Dylan’s relationship to the tradition of Folk music
How does it feel walking out of the cinema after seeing A Complete Unknown (2024)? Like you’ve experienced a film and a concert simultaneously, with all the same highs and lows. Directed and co-written by James Mangold, A Complete Unknown tells the story of the legendary Bob Dylan played by Academy Award Nominee Timothée Chalamet. The film covers Dylan’s formative years from when he first arrived in New York City in 1961 to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 where he performed with electric instruments and defied conventions in folk music, stretching his hand out to the rock scene.
The acting across the board is stellar. Chalamet embodies the enigmatic Dylan, playing guitar and harmonica with apparent ease and holding the audiences both inside and out of the film in the palm of his hand. He excels just as much in the more subdued moments when he’s not performing and always maintains the quiet confidence of Dylan throughout.
Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo (based on real life artist Suze Rotolo) manages to evoke the audience’s sympathies with her limited screentime; she is someone who spends the film on the periphery of Dylan’s rise to fame, caught in the middle of a love triangle with him and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). In a film consisting of music icons, she brings a sense of humanity and is in many ways the audience’s point of access.
Barbaro as Joan Baez is the ultimate stand-out in A Complete Unknown. Like Chalamet, when she sings and plays guitar, she commands the audience’s attention and admiration. Their performance of ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ is a definite highlight of the film. Her introduction scene singing ‘House of the Rising Sun’ immediately establishes the character as an equal talent to Dylan. Meanwhile, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman, the music manager who nurtured Dylan and Baez’s careers, is a reliable source of comic relief throughout the film.
Mangold is no stranger to directing biopics of world-famous musicians, having previously directed Walk the Line (2005) which centered around Johnny Cash. Cash features briefly in A Complete Unknown too; played by Boyd Holbrook, Cash was a pen pal and source of inspiration to Dylan. The detail is a testament to Mangold and fellow screenwriter Jay Cocks, who closely reference Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! throughout, and make the decision to have Dylan’s music set against the many historical events that were happening during this period. This accentuates the importance of his music and the quality of his lyrics (Dylan famously winning a Nobel Prize for Literature). For example, news clips covering the Cuban Missile Crisis can be heard as Dylan performs ‘Masters of War’ in a club.
Mangold expertly captures the raw energy and emotions of a live performance and never neglects the small character beats that need to happen to drive the plot forward. For instance, there are several audience shots when Dylan and Baez are playing in smaller clubs, yet when they are on tour or at the Newport Folk Festival, the camera is predominantly focused on the duo, allowing the tension and grudging respect between them to grow.
As for the songs themselves, the real showstopper is ‘Like a Rolling Stone’; a defining act for Dylan which signals him bidding his folk mentors like Pete Seeger adieu by going electric. As Dylan is such an inscrutable musician, Mangold and Cocks leave it to the audience to interpret what makes him the musical poet he became. Was it purely a response to Joan Baez’ contrasting style of music? We have to answer that question ourselves.
Where the film falters is the romance between Dylan and Sylvie. While Chalamet and Fanning do the best with the scenes they have, the film jumps through the early stages of their relationship, stunting the audience’s ability to emotionally invest in the pair. Overall, this was a very entertaining film and, hopefully, will please both die-hard Bob Dylan fans and cinema-goers alike.