A Complete Unknown (9/10)

by Tony Medley

141 minutes

R.

I could never understand Bob Dylan’s fame. His catalogue of songs he has written doesn’t contain much work that could qualify as long-lived standards. He wrote several songs that were hits by other artists, like Blowin’ in the Wind by Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds. As a singer, well, to put it in a nutshell, when Charlie Kirk was asked on the Gutfeld show on Fox News if he could have someone else’s voice, whose would he choose, Kirk replied, “Bob Dylan’s because when you got old and your voice went to pot, it wouldn’t matter.”

This movie makes a good effort at explaining Dylan’s recognition. But to start off, it’s directed by James Mangold (script by Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Elijah Wald), who also directed Walk the Line (2005), the biopic about Johnny Cash. He made the decision to eschew using Cash’s iconic voice for a horrible impression by Juaquin Phoenix, who is no singer and whose interpretation of Cash’s voice went a long way towards diminishing the movie for me. As a result, what could have been a movie full of great music was, instead, one that only had Phoenix singing a few bars of Cash’s many hits and botching them. The fact that Cash wrote and sang wonderful songs took a back seat to Cash’s story.

Mangold does it again here, having star Timothée Chalamet sing Dylan’s songs himself. This was a surprisingly good decision because Chalamet has a much better voice than Dylan. Mangold also avoided using Joan Baez’s gorgeous voice and allowed Monica Barbaro to use her own voice. That wasn’t so bad, either, as Barbaro has a beautiful voice.

The film tells the first four years of Dylan’s career, 1961-1965, ending with the climactic moment at the Newport Folk Festival in which Dylan used an electric guitar to the dismay of the promoters, including Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and the audience.

This, presumably (and in my opinion), marked the beginning of the end of beautiful music, to be replaced by the loudness of the electric guitar and the demise of melody and lyrics, as exacerbated by Bruce Springsteen and many who followed. It took a few years, but by 1990 much of the beautiful music many of us loved had virtually disappeared.

Chalamet gives a stunning, Oscar®-quality performance, effectively capturing Dylan’s selfish, abusive personality. Joining him are wonderful performances by Barbaro and Elle Fanning (whose performance is also Oscar®-quality) as Sylvie Russo (a substitute name for the late Suze Rotolo; Dylan requested that her name not be used), the woman Dylan eventually married after the relationship with Baez ended. The movie is unfortunately vague on these two relationships.

This is a highly entertaining movie filled with music. However, I timed it out at a little over 120 minutes, not the 141 advertised.