THE late Scottish writer Ian Bell summed it up when he paraphrased one of Bob Dylan’s lines: “The only thing they knew for sure about Bob Dylan, was that his name wasn’t Bob Dylan.”
A Complete Unknown is cut from the same cloth. James Mangold (Walk the Line/Ford Vs Ferrari) doesn’t bog himself down in strict historical accuracy and why should he? Accuracy has never been relevant to any truth in Dylan’s life or work.
There is no stale timeline of events following the self-aggrandising rise-fall-rise of a performer as you’ll find in countless other music biopics. This film takes the confines of four years and weaves together dates in a way that is revealing.
The plot follows the well-rehearsed story of Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961, conquering folk music and his seemingly sacrilegious abandonment of it by plugging in his electric guitar and elevating popular song beyond anyone’s imagination.
It’s possible to overstate Dylan’s impact on the wider protest movement, but essentially The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan contained original material which was simply unheard of in folk music.
That record smashed the ceiling of what was possible in popular music too, famously captivating The Beatles. Dylan’s electric albums would then bring his unparalleled writing ability directly to pop, redefine a “good” voice and change all conventions of what a song could be. I Want To Hold Your Hand or Love Me Do now sounded positively pedestrian in the wake of Like A Rolling Stone.
All songs are performed by the actors. Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal stays clear of any karaoke traps with high points being Song To Woody and A-Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. The former gives us a genuinely startling moment as Chalamet draws out a note to silence any cinema rustle as a thrawn Woody Guthrie stares into him.
His depiction is sincere and he captures the shy, but assured pre-rockstar Bobby Zimmerman before flipping at the sound of a toy police siren to the Cate Blanchett-esque, untouchably cool, electricity-infused Dylan. Quite fairly, you may find the performance exaggerated, but it’s tame compared to the amphetamine antics of the thin man in the Don’t Look Back footage.
Monica Barbaro plays an alluring Joan Baez and with silky dark hair and fangs to go, she wins the singing category with Farewell, Angelina (readers of The National may be interested to explore the Scottish origins of that song). Baez is the darling of the folk movement upon Dylan’s arrival, not that that stops him from dismissing her songwriting as “like an oil painting at the dentist’s office”. Dylan can be a prick in this film and Baez has no qualms in setting him straight as she goads him on stage and flicks the middle finger at him. There are plenty of genuine laughs in this film.
Meanwhile, Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), is the only person who truly knows Bob Dylan. She’s the single figure not laying claim to him or foisting an unwanted future upon the singer. Dylan recognises this as his fame explodes while Sylvie has the sense to see her own identity risks being reduced to Dylan’s second album cover. She refuses to be one of the “spinning plates” in his exploding life. Russo plays the real-life Suze Rotolo who would die in 2011 with Bob Dylan reported to have insisted Mangold disguise her true name to respect her privacy.
Dylan struggles to balance these two women in his life as, let’s face it, any young man would. Part of James Mangold’s ambition was not to depict an enigma and he does that well. The upstart can be monosyllabic, cocky, strange, normal, shy, sulky, belligerent, caring. He can’t keep his flat tidy or turn up on time.
He can’t pay his taxi fare on his trip to see his idol Woody Guthrie. Most of all, he struggles to comprehend the gift he has and the pressure others put on him to be their version of Bob Dylan.
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And it’s that struggle where the film comes into its own. It’s where the outstanding performance can be found. Edward Norton effectively is Pete Seeger. His performance is Ned Flanders-like, but rather than a religious reverence, the blacklisted Seeger’s devotion is to the honest belief that music can change the world.
Understanding that absolute conviction held among many in folk music is crucial to the film. They believed Bob Dylan’s music would bring about societal change. Music couldn’t, but they were prepared to go to prison for their beliefs. Hence the “voice of a generation”, “prophet” and other ridiculous titles which Dylan was bestowed.
There is a comical if not cruel scene that flicks from Dylan and his new rock friends hammering out blues rhythms in the studio to Seeger on a black-and-white TV talking about the colour of the rainbow. The truth was that Dylan never took the oath and would leave that scene in the smoke of his guitar amp with half of his audience, and some of the quite frankly snobbish ruling class of folk music scrambling to catch up. Something was happening there and they didn’t know what it was.
The Man in Black, however, had Dylan’s back from the get-go. Their exchanges are stirring as Boyd Holbrook’s interpretation walks the line between fun and dangerous. Johnny Cash saw a young man prepared to “tread mud into the carpet” and with a slap on the back and the gift of a guitar, he sent him forward.
Mangold’s film follows no sycophantic trail. This is no fawning work. His Bob Dylan is human and for that he gets somewhere near the truth of a shy vagabond who always wanted to play in a band. Dylan’s “protest” songs never contained any answers – those answers were blowin’ in the wind – yet for all their chatter and pressure, the supposedly high-minded missed that part.
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By the end of the film, the complete unknown remains as such as he sails off on his motorbike to drag pop music to his next stop. One year later, Dylan will fall off that same motorbike, go into hiding and start the process again.
A Complete Unknown doesn’t follow convention – it fibs, it’s funny, it’s truthful and for that, it’s a success. Watch it and dig out the performances on YouTube, but to put right just one historical inaccuracy in the film: “Play it fucking loud!”
