On Christmas day, moviegoers were given a surprise gift, a somewhat unique biopic. For many, “A Complete Unknown” was going to be just another biopic about one of their favorite artists. People must have been happy leaving the theater knowing that the great Bob Dylan biopic was the one to take risks and go further than most other biopics of our time. It was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, three Critics Choice Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“A Complete Unknown” introduces viewers straight to New York, where Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) has come looking for the great Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) who was hospitalized due to Huntington’s Disease. Dylan had read Woody’s autobiography, and in the hope of obtaining some of the magic that Woody holds, he hitchhiked from Minnesota to New York to meet him.
When Dylan arrived, he plays his piece “Song to Woody,” which would someday rise to the top of Bob Dylan’s discography. Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) hears him play and allows him to stay at his house, where he gives him the help needed to become a great folk singer even though Bob Dylan is egotistical and rebellious.
Before Bob Dylan released his first album, he met a girl in New York named Sylvie Russo, also known as Sue Rotello in real life. Their relationship, and the strain that Bob Dylan’s ego puts on it, comprises a large chunk of the two-hour movie.
As seen in the movie, part of the relationship’s strain comes from Dylan’s fake persona: being from the circus and being named Bob Dylan. In reality, his name was Robert Zimmerman. This lie fractured his relationship with Sylvie Russo. The rest of the strain comes from a love affair with Joan Baez, played by Monica Barbaro, a fellow folk singer.
As detailed in the film, Dylan had some of his music produced and gained popularity with the album performing at the Newport Folk Festival, where he breathed life into Pete Seeger’s idea of folk music. He went on to sell hundreds of thousands of records between 1962 and 1964. This opened him up to new opportunities, even gaining him a pen pal with another famous artist, Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook).
But this newfound fame haunted Dylan. His carefree and rebellious nature was at odds with what the raving audiences wanted from him. Dylan became angered that his audiences only wanted him to play the song “Blowin’ In The Wind.” It even escalated to a disaster in his long-awaited tour alongside Joan Baez, where the audience and Baez tried to force him into playing it. After that show, she ended her relationship with him until the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Bob Dylan’s performance there is one shrouded in myth and wonder, but “A Complete Unknown” doesn’t shy from trying to tell all of it, starting with the growing disagreements between Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan about going electric.
For years, the Folk Festival featured artists with only an acoustic instrument and their voices. But, in the 60s, electronic music was on the rise. Dylan wanted to play electronic music, but his producers were all against him because of their view it would not be folk with electric music. With Pete Seeger’s intense belief in how folk is supposed to sound, Dylan was forced into not using electric instruments in any of his work.
In an act of true Bob Dylan egotistical rebellion, on stage, he plugged in his electric guitar and played “Like a Rolling Stone,” a song from the “Highway 61 Revisited” he just released five days before Newport 1965. This album became one of his greatest albums of all time, even with the initial backlash against the electric music present throughout the album.
The Newport crowd hated it. They threw trash, merchandise, everything, on stage to try to stop Bob Dylan from changing folk music. Pete Seeger even got into a fistfight in an attempt to unplug the audio.
This moment is what makes “A Complete Unknown” different from the average biopic. The film ends with him being hated by the crowd. Only after finishing “Like a Rolling Stone” does he throw in the towel; Johnny Cash hands him his acoustic guitar and he plays “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
There is a scene early in the movie in which Dylan and Russo see the movie Voyager (1942) and have a conversation about it in a restaurant. When Sylvie mentions that the character played by Bette Davis ”finds herself” in the movie, Dylan calls out this notion: “She did not find herself like herself is a missing shoe or something; she just made herself into something different … what she wanted to be in that moment.”
The movie shows that Dylan also remakes himself into something different throughout the movie. He creates the egotistical character that he wanted to be during that time. He tries his hardest not to let anyone cage him, musically or emotionally, because that would be going against the character he is portraying, and so he hurts the ones he loves in the process.
Another more talked about aspect of the movie was the cast, which fans were ecstatic over. Timothée Chalamet disappeared into the role of Bob Dylan. He was nominated for a SAGA for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, as well as a Critics Choice award for Best Actor, with some saying that he should be awarded an Oscar for his role. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger was amazing as always and able to handle the consoling mentor and harsh zealot for folk. With Monica Barbaro playing a great Joan Baez. All of them learned and performed the songs with as much skill as the original artists. Chalamet, in particular, recorded a total of 40 songs and performed each song for the movie on set.
“A Complete Unknown” was a unique biopic with an incredible cast and a memorable ending. It encapsulates Bob Dylan’s mysterious and rebellious attitude and showcases important details on how the ego behind the voice caused harm to him and those around him.
