Dylan in the movies is a pretty crowded field when you dig into it. There are the front-on-acting pictures where Bob plays something akin to a loosely connected version of himself; documentary films that have either been revelatory fly-on-the-wall pieces or more elaborate Scorsese creations pushing creative licence to the extreme; a handful of straight-ahead concert films and even some sideways run-ups to a biopic along the way. In the hands of film producer James Mangold, however, there is a very real probability that the definitive Bob Dylan film has finally arrived, with the man himself nowhere to be seen but his spirit and very essence seeping into every frame. This is not the Dylan film for the Dylanologists, the hardcore who can analyse every moment of available audio in strict chronological order throughout his career. Those aficionados and scholars will give ‘A Complete Unknown’ one sitting and come away with an inventory of details that either did not occur in exactly the way the film portrays or simply never happened at all. For everyone else though, the people investigating the legend of a renegade individualist who took the sixties folk scene by the scruff of the neck, creating legendary acoustic anthems only to leave in a blaze of confused fury as he plugged in birthing the literate folk-rock form that has endured through mainstream music culture for over fifty years, then this film is the place to go.
James Mangold was the man behind the Johnny Cash biopic ‘Walk The Line’, so if you felt, as I do, that he pulled a gem out of the bag with that one, then I can fairly guarantee you will feel the same here. Whilst the whole piece does take a cut-and-paste approach with certain chronologies and detail (the famous “Judas” heckle and “I don’t believe you” response from 1966’s Manchester Free Trade Hall show now plays out at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival), the actual attention to visual detail is exacting. Clearly, every scenario was mapped out with reference to all available photographic and film images. The set at Newport or the scenes played out in recording studios, for example, boast meticulous focus on the stage and studio design, the kind of period microphones in use and particularly the clothes that Dylan was known to have been wearing during each phase. Exact replicas of polka-dot shirts and increasingly present shades have all been sourced. And even with a wonderful film like the Coen Brothers ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ in my frame of cinematic reference points, I can honestly say that this is the picture that has most tangibly and authentically re-created what I believe the sixties Greenwich Village scene to have looked and felt like. Then there is the acting itself, of which I can excitedly report that all the praise Timothee Chalamet has received for his portrayal of Dylan is indisputably deserved.
Chalamet wraps the scene-stealing the temperature of Bob without ever slipping into comic parody or cheap impersonation. He gets inside the soul of a sharp-thinking character hustling their way into an established and competitive music community, perfecting that Dylan hipster-speak of the time but in a manner that suits the actor’s DNA, not the man we are familiar with from ‘Don’t Look Back’ or the like. A great example of this is Chalamet’s vocal performance on the studio take of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’; listen to it and you know straight away it is not the original, but neither does any of the atmosphere in this recreation seem so fraudulent as to threaten your suspension of disbelief. Chief among the supporting cast, Monica Barbaro captures the timbre of Joan Baez’s speaking voice and brings an authority to her famous octave-leaping vocals. She also plays a Baez, who is a little wiser to Dylan’s slippery nature and better at protecting her own raw emotions than previously suggested. The standout for me, though, was Edward Norton’s presentation of Pete Seeger, a close-to central character throughout the film.
Norton is definitive in the way he brings a believable and essentially likeable Seeger to life. He has Pete’s sincerity down, the motivating belief he carried in his left wing, the humanist agenda and the non-judgemental way he interacted with people from all walks of life and society. And while it is obvious Pete was no lover of amplified music or the sixties pop scene in general, the script avoids the lazy pitfall of making him the enemy of rock ‘n’ roll. Pete simply did not want his and his fellow songsters’ social and topical songwriting mission to fall by the wayside. Consequently, in the scene where Pete is trying to persuade Bob not to use his Newport headline slot to play an electric set, it is less about his preference for simpler music and totally down to the imminence of them achieving something incredible with the protest movement. This is so well acted because we feel for Pete and do not want Bob to do it either in those moments. The way Dylan leaves the room, slamming the door behind, cleverly illustrates the singer’s own inner conflict. That disrupted Newport set brings a conclusion to ‘A Complete Unknown’ with a dramatic bang. All the long re-told pickaxe threats and backstage punch-up legends of the night woven into those conflict-heavy, eardrum-distorting scenes, neatly capping a glorious cinematic re-telling of one of twentieth-century music’s most legendary stories. How does it feel? It feels to this viewer like the wider world has finally got the biopic that such an important, brilliant, unpredictable and divisive artist deserves.
A Complete Unknown is in cinemas now.
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