A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is a “good” film, it looks good, has good actors in it (excellent: Edward Norton as Pete Seeger) and tells its story well. Those who don’t know Bob Dylan at all get a quasi introduction to the Greatest Hits between 1961-65, those who don’t know Joan Baez find out about the first Joan Baez album. Those who want to watch A COMPLETE UNKNOWN are either watching it because of Timothée Chalamet, Dylan, because James Mangold’s WALK THE LINE is also a very good film which is also a good introduction to Johnny Cash’s music or because the film is snappy enough for an entertaining evening at the movies. The film works for all as a cinema experience.

James Mangold tells two stories. The first narrative strand is about how Bob Dylan (Chalamet) frees himself from the constraints and dogmas of the folk music scene and starts to perform with a rock band, which some didn’t like at the Newport Folk Festival. The second strand is about Dylan’s relationship to artist and activist Suze Rotolo, who’s named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) in the film, and to singer and activist Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). Rotolo is featured with Dylan on the cover of Dylan’s album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.“ Joan Baez was already successful when Dylan came to New York.

James Mangold thus deviates from the classic narrative style of a rock biopic, which works according to the rise-crisis-crash-triumph pattern, see WALK THE LINE, ROCKET MAN, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, BETTER MAN, etc. Instead, Mangold's film depicts Dylan's early career as a story of emancipation, but one in which personal relationships fall by the wayside. He shows Dylan's relationships as narcissistic aberrations, in which Suze is the first to get left behind. The end of the relationship with Joan Baez is not mentioned. Baez and Dylan did not remain a couple, but they worked together for a long time and speak very kindly of each other. Dylan himself insisted on changing Suze's name because she is “a very private person.”

One of the film’s problems is that all the actors are too old. During the shoot, Chalamet was 29, Fanning was 26, Barbaro was 30. When Bob Dylan moved to New York, he was 19, Baez was also 19, Rotolo was 21. The historical story happened to very young people, not adults who should’ve known better. At 19, you're ambling through the world and you don't have the slightest idea what a relationship is, as long as everyone involved is pretty. By your late twenties or early thirties, that's all over and everyone has fallen flat on their face at least once - or not.

The other problem is that this film Dylan isn’t very interesting. The songs have their own power, and the scenes where Dylan first plays “Blowin' in the Wind” to Joan Baez or Pete Seeger first plays the beginning of "Girl from the North Country" rely entirely on the power of the music and the lyrics, even if Chalamet's vocals don't have anywhere near the piercing authority of Dylan. It works, but the songs come out of nowhere, and Dylan's first record is dismissed in the film with the words, “Oh, they were mostly covers.”

Covers versions were another core idea of folk, and Dylan’s cover was also special for that time. “Blowin’ in the Wind” became famous through the slick version of “Peter, Paul and Mary,” Dylan himself covered Blind Lemon Jefferson and other pre-war blues musicians. Dylan’s ability to build on tradition and write new songs that resonated with his generation - “Blowin' in the Wind” is based on “No More Auction Block,” as featured in Odetta recordings - was based on his passion for the archives, which was clearly evident in his radio show “Theme Time Radio Hour” (2006-2009). Many of his albums from recent years also reflect Dylan's interest in the history of American music.

Just as Mangold is not interested in Dylan's enthusiasm for folk and blues songs from the 1920s and 1930s, he is equally uninterested in Dylan's involvement in the civil rights movement. It does appear, but mainly because of the involvement of the women, Joan and Sylvie/Suze. Why Dylan's appearance at the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" on August 28, 1963 was important, what it was about, is all irrelevant. Ultimately, it is the story of a young man who frees himself from these horrible, hypocritical, dogmatic left-wing nutcases. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is a conservative film telling a story that isn’t true. The omissions are intended to show how unique Dylan was as an artist, but even unique artists stand in traditions.

Through Dylan, you can still uncover incredibly exciting, very old music relatively quickly by the likes of Blind Willie McTell, Blind Lemon Jefferson or Furry Lewis, but also to once-forgotten songs by Dylan's contemporaries. It is no coincidence that Dylan mentions Karen Dalton on the first page of his autobiography “Chronicles,“ and shortly thereafter, few indie films were without her song “Something on your Mind.“ Even after Dylan played with electric amplification, there were political songs like "Hurricane" or most recently "Murder Mystery Ballad" (2020), and some political folk songs only developed the necessary power with a huge band in the background, such as “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll” in the recording from the "Rolling Thunder" tour in 1975.

What is also strange is that not a single drug is consumed in the entire film. Dylan was alternately stoned and/or on amphetamines. Mangold's film reflects a very good, puritanical spirit.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy