A Complete Unknown

Film (2024)
Directed by James Mangold
Screenplay by James Mangold and Jay Cocks
Based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald

Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael; Film Editing by Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris; Casting by Yesi Ramirez; Production Design by François Audouy; Art Direction by Christopher J. Morris; Set Decoration by Regina Graves; Costume Design by Arianne Phillips

With Timothée Chalamet (Bob Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger), Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), Elle Fanning (Sylvie Russo), Dan Fogler (Albert Grossman), Eriko Hatsune (Toshi Seeger), Scoot McNairy (Woody Guthrie), Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash), Joshua Henry (Brownie McGhee), Steve Bell (Sonny Terry), Charlie Tahan (Al Kooper), Will Harrison (Bobby Neuwirth), Joe Tippett (Dave Van Ronk), Norbert Leo Butz (Alan Lomax), Nick Pupo (Peter Yarrow), Michael Chernus (Theodore Bikel), Kayli Carter (Maria Muldaur), David Alan Basche (John Hammond)

Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) was a complete unknown when he showed up in New York in early 1961 and the film tracks his meteoric rise over the next four years through his showdown at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when he brought, with considerable controversy, rock ‘n roll backup for his songs. His friendships with Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), his collaboration and romance with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and his involvement with another woman, here named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), are all depicted. (Sylvie Russo is a fictionalized name, but the character is closely based on Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s actual girlfriend from that era.)

The film opens with Dylan visiting Guthrie, one of his early idols, at a hospital in New Jersey where he was staying, afflicted with Huntington’s Disease, a genetic neurological disorder that compromised his ability to speak, sing, move or to play guitar. According to the film’s rendition, Dylan meets Pete Seeger at the hospital and his relationship with Seeger, an established and very well-known folk musician, becomes the vehicle for Dylan’s emergence into folk culture.

After opening at a club in New York a few months later, in the spring of 1961, Dylan’s success becomes rapid and widespread. Along the way, Dylan meets Joan Baez who, according to the script, he identifies as a pretty woman who sings pretty, perhaps a little too pretty. As well, Dylan takes up with Sylvie, a painter, and, as he pursues relationships with both her and with Baez, things become complicated.

Drama develops as Dylan’s fame soars, but also as his creative pursuit of musical forms that challenge the conventional notion of folk takes form. Gradually coming into connection with rock ‘n roll musicians and with an intent to expand his own music to the electronic realm, by 1965 Dylan comes to challenge what most of the organizers and many of the attendees at the Newport Folk Festival have come to expect, and he creates quite a ruckus. Even incredibly generous and mild mannered Pete Seeger gets flustered and upset, and it’s clear that, in breaking new ground, Dylan has also broken up some relationships.

Almost everything about this film is exceptionally good. Chalamet’s acting is spot on and he truly disappears into the role. Eward Norton is a wonderful Seeger, at once commanding and diffident in his bearing, and Seeger’s wife, Toshi (Eriko Hatsune), though not with a lot of words, also conveys a sense of balance, appreciation and delicate bearing that supports Norton’s Seeger eloquently. As Joan Baez, Monica Barbaro is wonderfully direct and strong but also vividly sensual, and Barbaro captures the passion with which Baez is drawn to Dylan while also maintaining a sense of Baez’ own unflappable strengths. And as Sylvie, Elle Fanning has a vivid vulnerability, her face a constant barometer for the degrees of outrageousness which Dylan exhibits. In smaller roles, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman gives a strong sense of the money and power behind the business production that surrounded Dylan, Boyd Holbrook gives a nice folksy and sympathetic account of Johnny Cash, and in a quick cameo Charlie Tahan as Al Kooper gives a great sense of what artistic determination is all about.

Indeed the acting is great, but the music is even better. And, astoundingly, most of it is done by the actors themselves. Chalamet actually does all the singing and guitar playing here and it is amazingly good, and, to boot, he sounds much like Dylan sounded but without making it into a caricature. It’s a truly significant accomplishment and he does it magnificently well. As Baez, Monica Barbaro also sings wonderfully well, and perhaps it’s a bit shocking to realize that she had not done much singing before this. Especially in the final musical duet with Chalamet’s Dylan, Barbaro is exquisite as is Chalamet; it is palpably terrific, with wonderful musical arrangement, fabulous guitar and poerful singing. It’s a great cinematic moment.

Though it’s not really documented in the film, the famous story of Dylan’s early meeting with Guthrie – otherwise beautifully depicted in the film – involved Woody telling Dylan don’t worry about writing songs, become a better singer. Despite Dylan’s reverence for Guthrie, it’s advice that Dylan never followed. In his most recent book, The Mystery of Mastery (2024), author and The New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik notes that Dylan never mastered singing but he did master something very significant – to paraphrase Gopnik, Dylan masterfully became DYLAN.

This wonderful film does a masterful job of conveying that exact point – that with sheer chutzpah, determination and incredible hard work, Dylan realized his incredible potential and unleashed his artistic visions without compromise. He didn’t settle for singing pretty, nor did he settle for staying within the confines of the folk idiom, but he pursued what he pursued with verve and commitment.

Though very good overall, there are some points in the narrative that seem a bit wanting. The camera dwells on Sylvie’s troubled face a bit too much without the script giving us too much more about her complex and difficult feelings for Dylan. As well, we get a sense of Joan Baez’s irritation with Dylan, but not enough to really understand why she breaks it off with him as well. Though we do see him playing Sylvie and Baez off one another as he travels from bed to bed, but the film leaves considerable filling-in of the emotional drama up to the viewer. In that sense, the complexities of the dual romances, though forming a substantial portion of the film’s drama, do not get as much playing out as one might hope. And though Edward Norton does a terrific job as Pete Seeger overall, there is a sense, particularly around the showdown at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, of his character being a bit limp and sanctimonious and does not convey as the complexity of the position Seeger was in as well as it might. There is so much focus on the character of Dylan, understandably, that some of these weaknesses in the other major characters’ portrayals come through. Nonetheless, the film is well-written and compelling overall.

In some way, the last scene of the film, with Dylan speeding away on a motorbike, betrays some of the sense of his daring and also suggests some of its complicated effects. Indeed, the next year – 1966 – in real life, Dylan would have a serious motorcycle accident that caused him significant injury and that had great impacts on his career. The film merely hints at that, but, in keeping with its deftness and economy, it gives one a bit of a shudder to realize the power, and to some degree danger, that lie within a powerful creative sensibility like Dylan’s.

Overall: an wonderfully good film. Not to be missed.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)