The film A Complete Unknown screened in a Special Gala at the Berlin Film Festival. Mangold has also written the script along with cowriter Jay Cocks.
The other major mistake most film directors make when directing a music biopic is the suppose that actually listening to the music and letting it speak for itself will bore the audience and stall the momentum of the storyline. Mangold doesn’t go down that path including many of Dylan’s songs almost in their entirety and letting Chalamet speak and act through the music.
The film starts in New York in 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an unknown 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar in Greenwich Village at the height of the folk music scene. But it doesn’t take long for people around the young Bob Dylan played by singer Timothée Chalamet to realise that this is a revolutionary talent. Greenwich doesn’t know it yet but Dylan is about to change the course of American music.
Dylan is a folk singer when he arrives in New York and he quickly heads to a New Jersey hospital where his idol Woody Guthrie played by Scoot McNairy is suffering from Huntington’s disease. There he meets Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger played by Edward Norton and Dylan ends up picking up his guitar and singing impressing both Guthrie and Seeger with his talent.
Dylan quickly acquires a girlfriend Sylvie Russo, played by Elle Fanning, who tries to get inside the young Dylan’s head but really he is young, selfish and self-absorbed and he already knows he’s on a one way trip to the top and she knows she won’t be coming along.
Dylan rapidly becomes the king of the folk scene and a protégé of Seeger. He becomes the top act at the Newport Folk Festival surpassing even Seeger. This reaches its apex with Dylan’s hit song Blowin in the Wind. Mangold lets Chalamet sing and the songs speak for themselves meanwhile Mangold contrasts the folk song world of Greenwich Village and it’s dedication to important issues of the day with scenes from anti-war protests and marches on the streets.
Dylan then forms a relationship both sexual and artistic with Joan Baez played by Monica Barbaro, who is queen of the folk scene at that time. The two do a double act on stage and off at the Newport Folk Festival.
But this is an artist who won’t be labelled or packaged and he moves on to electric guitar forsaking the acoustic guitar so loved by the folk purists like Seeger. He wants the whole world and the world wants him and he goes on to break out of the folk scene with rock’n’roll hit songs like Subterranean Homesick Blues and Like a Rolling Stone that make him a global rock music star.
There are great performances and a good story but essentially this is a one man film. Timothée Chalamet’s performance both singing and acting is what carries the film and makes it a hit.
A Complete Unknown (USA)
Director: James Mangold
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook
