'A Complete Unknown' review: Timothée Chalamet brilliantly plays Bob Dylan
The road to the Oscars in the last two decades has often traveled through films about 20th century entertainment figures. Jamie Foxx ("Ray") and Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) won best actor, while Reese Witherspoon ("Walk the Line"), Marion Cotillard ("La Vie En Rose") and Renée Zellweger (“Judy”) have taken home best actress.
The list of nominees includes Joaquin Phoenix for "Walk the Line," Austin Butler for “Elvis,” Bradley Cooper for “Maestro,” Andra Day for "The United States vs. Billie Holliday,” Meryl Streep for "Julie & Julia" (and as “Florence Foster Jenkins” if you want to stretch the category a bit), Viola Davis for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Michelle Williams in "My Week with Marilyn," Carey Mulligan in “Maestro,” Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem in “Being the Ricardos” and Ana de Armas in “Blonde.”
Expect the trend to continue this year, as Angelina Jolie will most likely be nominated for best actress for her magnificent and haunting portrayal of Maria Callas in “Maria” — and it would be a monumental upset if Timothée Chalamet isn't nominated for his brilliant, layered and at times downright astonishing work as Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown." (I think he should win; we’ll probably talk more about that down the line.)
The sing-song, gravelly cadences of Dylan are so instantly recognizable that it’s nearly impossible for any of us to resist diving into a quick impersonation (you see that title and think, "A compleeeeeeete Un-KNOWN" as you hear Dylan’s voice in your head), but Chalamet pulls off an acting hat trick here: He sounds like Dylan without ever coming across like he’s in an "SNL" skit, he handles the guitar and harmonica-playing with undeniable skills, and he creates a fictionalized version of Dylan that steers away from easy clichés and almost always carries the ring of essential truth.
Director James Mangold (maker of the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line"), who along with the skilled veteran Jay Cocks co-wrote the screenplay based on Elijah Wald’s book "Dylan Goes Electric!," wisely favors a no-fuss, relatively straightforward approach to the material as he covers Dylan’s meteoric rise to Spokesman for a Generation status from the early to mid-1960s. Shooting on digital but through vintage anamorphic lenses, Mangold and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael do a beautiful job of transporting us back to the streets, pubs, coffeehouses and apartments of 1960s Greenwich Village, which was re-created in various New Jersey locations. (Production design, costumes and hair in this film are exquisite.)
In the first of many scenes that are based on the historical record but turned into a made-for-the-movies moment, Chalamet’s Bob Dylan, née Robert Zimmerman, gently crashes the hospice room where Pete Seeger (a low-key scene-stealing Edward Norton) keeps a regular vigil over his ailing friend and fellow American folk music pioneer Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). Dylan takes out his guitar and plays "Song to Woody," and in that moment, the mumbling, shuffling, skinny kid from Hibbing, Minnesota, transforms into BOB DYLAN. Instantly, the veteran troubadours Seeger and Guthrie both know it: This young fellow has the potential to take their kind of music to a whole new level.
In many a music biopic, we see the shy and unassuming nice guy or gal turn into an egomaniacal monster after they’ve achieved spectacular success and won the adoration of millions. With "A Complete Unknown," we see a Bob Dylan who’s already brimming with self-confidence and ego and isn’t particularly interested in social niceties even before he becomes famous.
When Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo (based on the real-life artist and activist Suze Rotolo, who appears with Dylan in the famous photo on the album cover of 1963’s "The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan") and Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez separately call him out for his carefully manufactured persona and his cavalier mistreatment of their feelings, Dylan doesn’t even bother to disagree or apologize. At one point, Baez says, "You’re a kind of a------, Bob," and he has no counterargument. Dylan crafted enduring and memorable songs about humanity but seemed keen on cornering the market on aloofness offstage, to wit, wearing his sunglasses indoors and at night. Chalamet deftly mirrors the elusive side of Dylan’s persona.
"A Complete Unknown" is filled with signature performance moments, with Chalamet channeling Dylan on classics including "Masters of War," "Blowin’ in the Wind" and "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right." (We often see visual cues reminding us of the gravity of the time period, e.g., a news report about the Cuban missile crisis, and the moment when JFK’s assassination is reported on TV, with Sylvie overcome with emotion while Dylan seems ... enigmatic, as always.)
The duets with Baez are highlights as well; even though Dylan criticizes Joan for sounding too perfect and too polished, and he chafes at doing a polished and programmed "greatest hits" tour with her, they are magical onstage together. Monica Barbaro has done fine work on the shows "Chicago P.D." and “Chicago Justice” and in a supporting role in "Top Gun: Maverick," but this is a star-making performance. She has movie star chops.
Much of the second half of "A Complete Unknown" is a buildup to Dylan’s controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, when he ignored pleas from the traditionalists to stick to acoustic music and plugged in for electric and groundbreaking performances of "Maggie’s Farm" and "Like a Rolling Stone." (In a hilarious and spot-on cameo, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash exhorts Dylan to "Make some noise, B.D., track some mud on the floor.") An acoustic v. electric dustup might seem almost trivial as viewed through the long lens of history, but it was a pivotal episode for modern music and a key moment for Bob Dylan, who was once again telling the world that he was going to do things his way, and you could either come along for the ride or don’t.
Dylan remains one of the most famous and most chronicled figures in modern music history, but in some ways he’s STILL a complete unknown. Just the way he always wanted it. Timothée Chalamet gives an Oscar-worthy performance in one of the best films of 2024.