Chalamet Gives Us His Heart, but We Wanted His Soul in “A Complete Unknown”
A new biopic from Searchlight Films stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Jon Friedman, own resident Dylan expert and author got an advance screening prior to its wide theatrical release on Dec. 25.
| 19 Dec 2024 | 02:04
Elle Fanning (left) plays the character Sylvie Russo, based on Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet’s) one-time girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who was pictured clinging to Dylan’s arm on the cover of the 1963 album “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” (
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Edward Norton (left), who plays folk singer Pete Seeger, and Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown” which hits theaters on Dec. 25. (
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Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown” which opens on Dec. 25. (
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Director James Mangold and Timothée Chalamet on the set of “A Complete Unknown.” (
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In the ballyhooed new Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” teen heartthrob Timothée Chalamet earnestly plays the pop culture icon as the king of folk music makes the transition to a rock and roll sensation.
Ironically, Chalamet is attempting a similarly daunting feat of his own: using A Complete Unknown as a springboard to help him graduate in the eyes of critics and fans beyond the light movie fare of Wonka to something a lot more weighty and grown up.
Chalamet works hard and approaches the role of Dylan seriously and respectfully. But it is essentially a thankless task because Dylan, in these 1960s years of quicksilver changes, was too frenetic to pin down in a two-hour movie.
Chalamet’s Dylan is a glib celebrity who does not prompt the audience to think deeply about the motives or consequences as he moves from folk to rock.
Chalamet, still in his late 20s, clearly embraced the acting challenge. His singing and guitar playing do not seem amateurish, a risk when portraying someone as identifiable as Dylan. Even the most ardent Dylan fans will have to give Chalamet credit for carrying this off.
Still, I wish the script and Chalamet’s acting had been subtler and more nuanced. You might say Chalamet gives us his heart– but we wanted his soul, to paraphrase a classic Dylan line from “Don’t Think Twice.”
It’s unfortunate because Dylan was a rich figure at this point in his life, He was juggling romances while desperately seeking to change his image, topple the Beatles and leave behind acoustic sounds, the very music that had catapulted him to worldwide idolatry in the early 1960s.
Meanwhile, Edward Norton, in the other top-shelf role as folk legend and activist Pete Seeger, is Oscar-worthy as a supporting actor. Norton’s Seeger starts out happily championing a neophyte Dylan to Woody Guthrie and others. Ultimately, Seeger feels alienated and exploited when Dylan went electric and abandoned folk music. Norton quietly seethes with anger, the true mark of a world-class actor.
Influences
The two movies that most influenced “A Complete Unknown” seem to be “Walk the Line,” the story of Johnny Cash’s pursuit of music immortality and his one true love, singer June Carter. It was directed by James Mangold, who also helmed A Complete Unknown. Then there is “No Direction Home,” Martin Scorsese’s informative documentary. Both of the films were released in 2005. In Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix, as Cash, and Reese Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for playing the luminous June Carter, brought the often-painful saga of Cash’s ups and downs to life. Every scene crackled with raw emotion.
Likewise, in the Coen Brothers tribute to the Greenwich Village early-1960s folk scene, Inside Lewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac seethes, playing a folk singer who, unlike the ambitious, opportunistic Dylan, turns out to be his own worst enemy.
But there is no comparable drama in A Complete Unknown, which struck me as being more earnest than inspired. To top it off, the film seems oddly sanitized. There is plenty of rock and roll but hardly any of the classic sex and drugs of the period. In this treatment, Dylan might have been a college professor or a chemist, not a glamorous musical idol.
Perhaps I know too much about Dylan’s life to be objective, as someone who has written a book about Dylan and currently teaches a college course about his work.
This elitism is likely to be a problem when a self-proclaimed Dylan expert writes about the film. That person is sure to highlight any factual errors, inaccuracies, exaggerations and taking liberties with the real-life events. The chronology of the music as it is presented in the film jumps around a good deal, for example.
And why did the movie stop at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the venue when Dylan infamously “went electric” and was booed for the first time. But not the last! On Dylan’s subsequent 1965-66 worldwide tour, he was booed lustily at virtually every stop, from Australia to Forest Hills.
A Complete Unknown is not designed to appeal to an older, moviegoing crowd, which already knows the Dylan story chapter and verse. Besides, middle aged people and seniors don’t tend to crowd multiplexes on Friday and Saturday evenings and therefore are not an idea demographic. Young people typically flock to the movies on date night.
Entertainment Vehicle
A Complete Unknown is an entertainment vehicle that is intended to draw a big box office. The prospect of a brand-new Timothée Chalamet film is bound to spark interest and fill cinemas with teenagers and young adults.
Chalamet has been getting strong reviews and was nominated for a Golden Globe, with Oscar consideration sure to come soon. Chalamet is a young artist in the early stage of what promises to be a major career. I can’t wait till he goes electric!
Manhattan resident Jon Friedman, who teaches a course about Bob Dylan at Stony Brook Universtiy, is the author of “Forget About Today: Bob Dylan’s Genius for Reinvention, Shunning the Naysayers and Creating a Personal Revolution.”
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