James Mangold and Timothée Chalamet bring Bob Dylan’s electric controversy to the big screen.
Back in 2022, when I found out that Bob Dylan was playing in my home city in what promised to be a once-in-a-lifetime show, I jumped at the chance to see one of the key figures of my personal history book. Alongside Paul McCartney, he’s part of that small group of legends whose mere sight can leave me feeling as if I have been granted access to a time not quite my own, only half real because it feels so much like part of a past already established and gone. And, just as I expected, Dylan’s concert in the Generalife Gardens of Granada was a memorable experience, enhanced by his decision to ban mobile recording devices during the performance. An undocumented experience, and for that reason, all the more valuable.
Seeing Dylan live, it was difficult to get my head around the fact that he’s been around, with a more-than-prominent position in the music industry, since the sixties. His not-too-shabby career spans over six decades, rife with all kinds of successes, controversies, and memorable moments. His irruption into the Greenwich Village scene, the performance at the 1963 March on Washington, the Rolling Thunder Revue, the Travelling Wilburys, the Christian album trilogy, a portrayal by Cate Blanchet in the film ‘I’m Not Here’, the Nobel Literature Prize, the Never Ending Tour (started in 1988 and continued uninterrupted ever since, with over three thousand concerts played to date). Rivers of ink have been put to paper documenting all this, and now, Dylan is immortalized on celluloid once more.
‘A Complete Unknown’ is centred on one of Dylan’s much talked about transformations and what’s known as the ‘Electric Dylan controversy’. The film is based on the 2015 book ‘Dylan Goes Electric!’ by Elijah Wald, adapted for the big screen by screenwriter Jay Cocks and director James Mangold himself. I think it was a wise decision to focus the film on a specific period of the singer’s life rather than one of those regrettably too-frequent biopics that attempt to cover the entirety of an artist’s life, from their first diaper change to their last senile throes (or close enough). Beyond the fact that Dylan’s whirlwind of a life would be impossible to encompass in a single film, this is a hackneyed formula that, more often than not, results in a diluted representation of the protagonist, lost among the myriad details of their life. Sticking to a particular period of Dylan’s life greatly helps to prevent this. And sure, ‘A Complete Unknown’ can still be accused of being overly conventional in many ways, but it will always be difficult to effectively capture both the mystery and truth of the enigma that is Robert Zimmerman. The film’s approach may be traditional, but it works in ways a more experimental film might have floundered.
And who plays the man himself? Timothée Chalamet, divisive, driven, offbeat, and extremely successful despite his youth. In all these regards, very much like Dylan in the 1960s, and in my mind, quite an appropriate choice, his acting talent being the foremost reason. As was advertised during last year’s controversial Oscar race, Chalamet underwent a lengthy preparation process before shooting began. Five years were devoted to learning guitar and harmonica, nailing Dylan’s characteristic sound and swagger, gaining weight, and, well, doing all those things only an actor might fully understand and explain. Whatever initial misgivings you might have, it’s impossible to deny that Chalamet’s portrayal is one of the film’s main assets. In a project bursting at the seams with talent, the central performance asserts itself as an outstanding portrayal of an always-elusive figure. However, the film also benefits from an exceptional cast, which shines in its portrayal of many essential figures of the 1960s music scene, namely, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, and Elle Fanning as the fictional stand-in for Suze Rotolo (Dylan’s early love interest, known in the film as Sylvie Russo, per Dylan’s personal request).
‘A Complete Unknown’ is not the type of film whose viewing experience can be diminished by knowledge of the real-life facts (some might argue that quite the opposite). That said, fair warning: from this point on there will be many details about the plot, right up until the story’s climax at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
The film can (and should) be seen as a piece of historical fiction. One can imagine the sleepless nights spent by all of those involved, dreading the hour in which they’d find a mob of angry Dylanites at their door. A lack of historical care is hardly something to advertise about a biographical film. However, factual accuracy is clearly not one of the film’s main objectives, although it succeeds in evoking a young version of Dylan, one that becomes more and more believable as the story progresses and uncertainties are happily set aside. An important contributing factor is the remarkable set design, which draws you in from the start, with a vivid recreation of busy streets bursting with life and a pre-digital society. There are also plenty of easter eggs for more knowledgeable fans to spot throughout, with frequent name drops, as well as hints at famous anecdotes and rumours. Essentially, a plausible fiction is created to tell a story that, if not accurate, tries to stay true to the artist’s spirit and the conflicts of his early career.
The story begins with Dylan’s arrival in New York with little more than his guitar and the clothes on his back. It’s soon revealed that the aspiring musician is on a quest to meet his hero Woody Guthrie, hospitalized due to his ailing health. On his first visit to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, one of many, Dylan also meets folk icon Pete Seeger, who at the time was still involved in a protracted legal battle, having been under investigation for many years due to his so-called subversive political beliefs. A friendship is quickly established between the music veterans and Dylan, who plays a song written for Guthrie and manages to impress them with his talent. These events and Dylan’s first years in the city are streamlined for the sake of the story, and it can therefore seem like everything unfolded in a much more straightforward manner than in reality. The writers don’t shy away from any necessary changes, which lead to the merging and omission of certain events and people, changes in dates, and certain figures appearing in places they were nowhere near in real life (especially regarding the 1965 Newport Festival).
Another essential figure in the film is singer-songwriter Joan Baez, who at the start of the film is already celebrated for her music, in contrast with Dylan’s complete anonymity. Their first encounter takes place at an open-mic night at Gerde’s Folk City, though it’s not until some time later that they become involved musically and, let’s say, romantically. This causes obvious strains in his relationship with his girlfriend Sylvie, from whom he hides the affair as long as he can manage. ‘A Complete Unknown’ doesn’t attempt to construct a whitewashed version of its protagonist. Quite the contrary, Dylan is at times portrayed as arrogant, selfish, and manipulative, in a way that balances with his positive side, resulting in a credible representation of a complex personality. Needless to say, this also extends to his ever-evolving relationship with Baez and their peculiar power dynamics, which shift as their careers head in different directions.
At the start of his career, Dylan is forced to record versions of classic songs, but soon tries to move away from this strategy, in an attempt to promote his own material. During this period, Baez covers some of his compositions, to greater attention than his original versions. In addition to this, Dylan is initially frustrated by poor sales, but despite everything still manages to preserve a bulletproof confidence. The darker side to this is a narcissistic streak, which leads to (among other things) his disparaging of Baez’s abilities. In one particular scene, he goes as far as telling her that she tries too hard and that her songs are like paintings found in dentists’ waiting rooms. In her words, he’s “kind of an asshole”. And it certainly must have been frustrating to be around him, because, despite her own enviable talent, Dylan always eclipsed anyone he was around.
Some have accused the film of simplifying the mystery, the mystique (or whichever high-flown word you might favour) of Bob Dylan. My response to this is yes and no. The figure initially shown in the film is a boy of nineteen, eager to succeed and create an identity for himself. There’s some speculation as to his past, but the intrigue is vague at best. What you witness are the first steps of a young musician who’s still trying to make it in the chaotic world he finds himself in, penniless and unknown, despite his inner claims to grandeur. At this stage, there’s a meagre past to captivate the audience with, and this might just be the point. As the story progresses, the character becomes tangled up in a web of his own creation, a growing mystery to himself and everyone else as he moves further away from the young man he once was. Dylan bounces off the people he meets along his journey and is transformed with each encounter. He effectively creates himself through a constant reaction to his environment. Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, Cash… they all leave a mark on him, and unintentionally send him in new directions. It’s also good to see Sylvie indirectly acknowledged as an influence on his style, as someone who sparked in him a greater interest in literature and politics. Dylan’s music and persona are deeply influenced by all of these people, without whom he wouldn’t be the artist or the person that he eventually becomes. The character talks repeatedly about these ideas: how there’s no such thing as personal evolution, just creation. Much time is devoted to pondering what an artist is, how they’re shaped by both expectations and their own will, and if there’s such a thing as an immutable identity.
“There is no past Sylvie! They remember what they want, they forget the rest”
The conflict surrounding identity and expectations becomes one of the film’s central themes, leading to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Here’s where ‘A Complete Unknown’ finds an interesting angle to separate it from other similar biographical films. The protagonist faces an unusual dilemma in which he’s not so clearly in the right (if such a consideration even applies), though there are plenty of diverging opinions on this subject.
After the success garnered by his following albums, leading up to the mid-sixties, Dylan is a rising star. He has surpassed his peers in popularity and has become an enigmatic icon onto whom everyone seems to project their own ideas. If years before his songs were covered by other artists to greater success, this is no longer the case, as he’s now seen as an artist in his own right, and a great one at that. However, Dylan’s already tenuous notion of identity begins to blur due to the pressures of stardom and, as he puts it, “everyone wanting him to be somebody else”. So, as he begins to write new material, with the aid of a group of talented young musicians that include the likes of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (here comes ‘Highway 61 Revisited’), there’s a natural tendency towards reinvention. In the film, the allure of rock and roll is personified by Johnny Cash, whose unruly attitude was certainly different to that of good ol’ Pete Seeger, and whose greater appeal to a young and lively musician isn’t difficult to understand.
The film’s climax approaches. It’s July of 1965 and Dylan is set to return to the Newport Folk Festival, where he’d played the two previous years, to great success. However, this time around things are different. In the film, there’s an atmosphere of apprehension surrounding what Dylan is planning for his set, as there are rumours that he intends to play with a rock accompaniment, that is to say, to play electric rather than acoustic. The reality of the situation might have been more spontaneous than this since, in reality, Dylan played two consecutive days at the festival, the first consisting of an acoustic set, something the film opts to omit. Regardless of this, the tense situation is intensified by frequent clashes with Alan Lomax, one of the festival’s organisers, whose problem might have been more related to Dylan himself, rather than rock and roll or electric guitars. Nonetheless, the simplified conflict as seen in the film is between traditional folk and an electric reinterpretation more akin to rock music. Suspense builds as Dylan considers a course of action. To him, it seems like a question of freedom from constraints and external expectations. And when he finally walks out on stage, he decides it’s time for something new. The world is changing and so is he. Dylan and his band play a short electric set, to a disconcerted audience of mixed reactions, ranging from enthusiasm to disappointment.
The most interesting aspect of this conflict goes beyond mere musical interests or the discrepancies between purists and experimentalists. It’s the clash between different belief systems, and in particular, the contrast between Dylan and Pete Seeger, for whom the stakes seem much different. For him, music has the power to bring about changes in society and awaken a class consciousness, things for which he had been fighting for many years. Moreover, Seeger sees Dylan as a major contributor to the American folk music revival (its peak in popularity in the 60s), as illustrated by his ‘teaspoon parable’:
“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, ‘How did it happen so fast?”
A story he told many times in the hope of inspiring his listeners, there are different versions of the parable, but the essence remains the same: people are not defenseless when they stand together and strive towards a common goal. In ‘A Complete Unknown’ Seeger tells Dylan that while everyone was standing around with his teaspoons, he came with a spade. He believes it’s in this young artist’s hand to change the tide, if he only helps them go a little further. It’s no trivial matter for him, but then again, neither is it for Dylan, whose grasp on his own identity is loosening as he is set upon by fame’s collateral dangers. But despite Pete’s efforts to stop the performance, in the end, the decision belongs to Dylan, and the result is one of music’s unexpected turning points.
The film’s portrayal of the audience’s reaction is another aspect that could be discussed until the end of time. As there are few and confusing recordings of the actual concert, muddled by contradictory first-hand accounts of the events, accuracy in this regard is little more than a hopeful dream. Booing, cheering, confusion, and the chaotic thunder of an allegedly deficient sound system are all sounds that likely intermingled in the atmosphere that day. The film captures that much, which is not to say a prodigal use of the filmmakers’ creative license isn’t evident. And yet there’s a distorted truth in many details, like that one member of the audience who distinctly shouts ‘Judas’ at Dylan (an incident that actually took place in Manchester, but that’s the nature of film).
‘A Complete Unknown’ has all the ingredients to be a highly divisive film. Its viewing experience will vary significantly depending on each spectator’s interest, knowledge, and preconceptions about its central figure. To some, it will be a gateway to discovering a fascinating figure and his music, to others, a frustrating fiction far removed from real events. Seen as historical fiction, it’s an interesting portrayal of the early years of one of the great artists of the 20th century. Whether closer to truth or fiction, it’s still a film very much worth watching, and then, perhaps, discussing to its last detail.
I think what the film – and your review – captures is an essence of what the times were like, and Timothée Chalamet certainly replicates Dylan to an astonishing degree – with well-known photos reprodued, and Dylan’s existing on-film presence given extra life.
And that tension between the folk world and Dylan’s ambitions is brought into stark relief – having given them ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, ‘Pawn in their Game’, ‘Hard Rain’, and more, what more did the folk world expect from him? And yet it’s easy to understand that they could think that they just needed one more ‘Masters of War’ and all their arguments would be made unshakeable.
Personally, I felt it took the filmed source material of ‘Don’t Look Back’ and ‘Festival’ and made a rounded story of it. Yeah, there are liberties taken with history, but the essential points are there – it would have been nice to have had Dylan’s full response to the Judas cry incorporated, but hey at least the undoubted booing captured in ‘Festival’ is there to the full.
Even the doubters should give it a try.
Hi Sebastian, loved your review. Ranks with some of the best i’ve read of this remarkable film.
As an aside you mentioned seeing Bob in your hometown of Granada in 2022. Now, did you mean 13/06/23? I’m asking as you said there was no recording evidence of the gig.
Well friend, not true . The complete stereo audio is on youtube (get it while it’s up there!) Hope this helps.