REVIEW: "A Complete Unknown" (2024)

WRITER'S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on January 10, 2025. 

As he did with the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, director/co-writer James Mangold crafts a skillfully directed and brilliantly acted piece with A Complete Unknown. Set in New York City’s Greenwich Village, during the 1960s folk music scene, Timotheé Chalamat plays Minnesota-based artist-musician Bob Dylan, a man who was/is many things: a poet, a wanderer, a rebel, a prophet, an enigma, and somebody who refused to put himself in a box or succumb to what society supposedly wanted him to be. 

More than an engrossing biopic, the film is incredible to listen to; I got chills every time they played “Like a Rolling Stone.” In fact, Mangold and his team (including co-writer Jay Cocks) interpret this story of Dylan’s early career, in which he transitions from folk to blues to electric/rock, through a playlist of some of his most well-regarded songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” (At the theatre I’ve been working lately, I’ve seen various screenings where people stayed through the credits just to listen to the soundtrack.) 

A Complete Unknown is also the kind of film you can’t take your eyes off of, thanks to the incredible performances by Edward Norton (as Pete Seeger), Monica Barbaro (as Joan Baez), Boyd Holbrook (almost unrecognizable as Johnny Cash), Elle Fanning (as Sylvie Russo), and Scoot McNairy (as an ailing Woody Guthrie). Every respective actor almost completely disappears into their transformative and transcendent roles flawlessly (Chalamet sporting Dylan’s trademark sunglasses and mannerisms is icing on the cake), just as every music cover/sequence is flawlessly executed. The music was filmed live on set, with the actors playing and singing themselves. Remarkable. 

Possibly encapsulated—or, at least, foretold—in the track, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” the film’s setting recalls an existential and radical period of political and moral issues/rallies related to JFK, Malcolm X, and even music tastes. The story doesn’t hide Dylan’s relationships and affairs, including the one he had with Baez. (To be fair, this aspect is handled in a non-graphic way.) As already noted, the myth, legend, and facts about the famous singer-musician’s life and career are kept vague and mysterious. As Dylan says in the film, “I put myself in another place, but I’m a stranger there.” 

Set during numerous music festivals throughout the first-half of the decade, culminating in Dylan’s controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Music Festival, A Complete Unknown highlights the power of music and performance, both its advantages and disadvantages. This goes just as well with what music says and/or doesn’t say, how it’s expressed, what the characters are going through, and the aforementioned pressure of what other people apparently wanted Dylan to be—and his apparent pursuit of freedom from that. 

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