Neither Judas, nor Jesus, but maybe a bit of both. I walked out of the theatre after watching A Complete Unknown feeling it was the most beautiful film I have seen on “artistic battle” or “creative growth” with a “lump in my throat”. Based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric, this biopic by James Mangold traces the brief five-year history of Bob Dylan’s arrival in New York at the age of 19 from Minnesota in search of his idol Woody Guthrie. He is befriended by and is introduced to the public by Pete Seeger, meets up with Joan Baez, storms the scenario by finding his own prophetic songs, finds and loses his first love and ends up consciously disillusioning his fans by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival.
Now, this is a small but rather historic part of Dylan’s life that changed rock and roll forever and redefined the singer-songwriting tradition for years to come. All Dylan fans know it by heart. Yet director James Mangold takes us on a freight train ride which jolts you and rumbles towards the basic truth with such unabashed beauty that you are left as dazzled as the dying Woody as he watches Dylan ride away on his motorcycle into the future, unknown.
For this Mangold justifiably banks heavily on the talent of Timothee Chalamet who is “electrifying” as Bob Dylan. Chalamet’s funny, sexy portrayal whips up all the smirk, uneasy energy and unwashed honesty that can mean only Bobby. We all know that there was something cherubic about young Bobby. Somewhat frail yet magnetic persona that redefined fashion. Chalamet’s angelic beauty coupled with his perpetual scowl makes him the “forever young” Dylan we want to see. He is simply haunting while performing the tracks himself, especially, It’s All Over Now and It Ain’t Me Babe. He manages to somehow fabricate the raspy voice and nasal intonation without which Bobby is not Bobby. At times it seems like he’s unsure of his own lines like a hungover troubadour, running out of breath. You are riveted to your seats watching a somewhat ghost of a 20-plus Dylan take you for an eclectic ride. Chalamet manages to get even the iconic strumming right.
There are so many Dylans; poet, prophet, rebel, recluse, etc…. The film doesn’t try to mingle them or choose one. True to the title, it stays anchored solidly in good singing and automatically the enigma of Bob that is awkwardly charming, mysterious and confounding, emerges.
Talking of rendition, the greatness of this movie about iconic singers is that all actors playing the legends sang and played their guitars to pitch perfect honesty. From Pete Seeger, Joan Baez to Johnny Cash. Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, to my mind, is one of his career’s best performances till date. My friend and colleague, Kabir Suman, who met, interacted and shared a bond with Seeger, saw the teaser and told me he looked like him. I have seen enough videos of Seeger, but Norton goes beyond the similarity of looks, voice and playing the banjo. Norton brings Seeger’s enormous love for humanity, kindness and deep recognition of Dylan’s talent so much to the forefront that somehow their epic fallout reaches a fatalistic height. It doesn’t remain just controversial “dirt on the carpet” as Johnny Cash says when he welcomes the electric Dylan.
Edward Norton’s rendition of Pete’s songs and Monica Barbaro, playing Joan Baez, singing hers and Dylan’s songs are so similar to the original that one is left sitting in the theatre feeling that the beauty of their songs is actually far greater than their “so-called” cause. The songs become far bigger than their activism. Thereby, without demeaning their genius they become inadvertently more preachy and purists than Dylan, who is actually addressing the changing times.
The scene where Dylan first sings The Times They Are A-Changin’ at the Newport Folk Festival, as Edward’s Pete watches from backstage and is swept away into the song, is one of the finest scenes in the film. Edward’s reaction shots subtly move from admiration to an assurance, clearly depicting that Pete cares more for the lyrics than the music of Bobby. After the final electric blow, when he comes to meet Dylan and sees him sulking alone amongst all the reverie of admiration, it’s clearly evident that Dylan is aware of the revolution he has created and has to walk into a future unknown.
Now, all these historic magical moments could be created because Bob Dylan himself was involved with the script and other stuff as the creative producer. He told the director to change the name of his first love from Suze Rotolo to Sylvie Russo. He apparently insisted on fictionalising a particular scene.
To me, he perhaps meant to keep the imagination flowing amid the facts. Therefore it becomes clearly evident that Dylan never, ever wanted to just paint a pretty picture of himself. He is and was always critical of his own life and times. He was wary of publicity ’cause it always refuses to know the unknown. There are many films made on Dylan, by Martin Scorsese to Todd Haynes. They were all good in their own way. Where James Mangold manages to score, minus all the frills, is to give you a clear glimpse of a young Dylan who refused to intellectualise creativity.
According to Dylan, creativity has to be respected for its own sake. Mangold manages to give you that unbiased picture. A picture where a film starring Bette Davis becomes instinctively more important to Dylan than a music concert. Towards the beginning of the movie Dylan decides to see a rather corny Bette Davis film with his first, activist girlfriend.
Let’s get to the love story in the movie. Much of the movie time is spent in the narration of Bob’s first love, the sad-eyed activist Sylvie, played effectively by Elle Fanning, who invariably fails to accept the honey-voiced, cool, already famous Joan Baez played brilliantly by Monica Barbaro. Dylan cheats on Sylvie by making love to Joan in Sylvie’s room while she is away. Chalamet’s cold gaze at Joan when he first meets the singing sensation makes it evident that he desires her and obviously wants her success. Bob lets Joan sing his songs before they are recorded and get away with the applause, yet feels her own songs are like “oil paintings in a dentist’s store”.
The egos of both the legends clash as they go touring together. Despite falling apart, they seem to relish the hurt and hatred between them, incapable of ignoring their talent. The second most brilliant scene is where the duo sing It Ain’t Me Babe as if it’s making their intimacy humiliatingly public, witnessed by a teary Sylvie backstage. The scene is so well shot, acted and sung that the autobiographical element inherent in the legendary song becomes harrowingly palpable. Mangold makes you witness the complexities of early Dylan’s life through his song sequences and gives less emphasis on the dialogue scenes. This choice makes the movie raw and rare.
The second and final parting with Sylvie is perhaps fictionalised, as corny as the Bette Davis movie they once saw, somehow manages to bring out the young Dylan’s fatalistic romance. By then we know he has fallen out with Baez. That he is alone. Towards the end of the film, having gone electric and shattered his pure folk image, Joan walks up to him to say that he “won”. That he finally got the freedom from everyone he wanted. The greatness of the movie is that it doesn’t show him as obviously victorious, which he became, but a huge talent who is finally a loner.
The film is not a perfectly rounded drama. Mangold refuses to tell you a typical Hollywood biopic. Rather, it’s a compilation of great moments that makes up a fragmented but hugely cinematic joyride.
The scene where a drunken Johnny Cash, played with superb relish by Boyd Holbrook, keeps smashing his Chevrolet into other cars and an indecisive Dylan in dark glasses stares silently smoking, is like an eerie omen for the final electric outburst which will prove dangerous. The fight between Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman and the folk purist Alan Lomax as the band goes crazily loud and the crowd goes berserk in anger, calling Dylan a traitor to the cause, is a rare hilarious moment where rock and roll becomes far more rebellious than so-called radical folk.
Mangold always makes performance-driven biopics like Walk The Line, Ford V Ferrari. A Complete Unknown is no exception. Only here, he refuses to tell you a smooth, organically structured story. It is shot far more grittily than the others by Phedon Papamichael, giving it that rusty look of an old jukebox. All the best moments are actually enhanced because they either centre around or culminate into a song. On the fateful night in 1962, when New Yorkers feared nuclear attack because of the Cuban missile crisis, a panic-stricken Joan Baez rushes out of her apartment, desperately tries to catch a taxi for the airport, finally ends up transfixed in a bar watching Dylan quietly singing, Masters Of War. It is the most telling sequence of the film.
The beginning and end comprising Dylan’s first and perhaps last visit to Woody Guthrie suffering from the incurable Huntington’s disease in a New Jersey hospital manages to give the film the organic whole like that of a long Dylan song. Both the scenes are shot amid, gritty pale blue walls of the hospice, where the young Dylan deeply connects with his dying hero who cannot speak. Scoot McNairy’s hollow cheeks and defiant stare make up for an astonishing Woody Guthrie.
Woody’s Dusty Old Dust with the tagline, “So long it’s been good to know you”, is played over the opening credits. It sets the freewheeling mood of the film, which is more about the bonhomie and breakup of musicians, than Dylan himself. It is repeated in the final scene where the dying Woody is perhaps the only one who understands the freewheeling spirit of Dylan.