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18th January 2025
02:00pm GMT
In recent years, there has been an overwhelming amount of musical biopics made - with the following artists all getting a movie about them: Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holliday, Bob Marley, David Bowie, Elton John, Elvis, Judy Garland, Kneecap, Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Robbie Williams, Queen and Whitney Houston.
And this doesn't seem to be stopping soon as a Bruce Springsteen film and four Beatles movies (one for each Beatle) are notably in the works.
As such, you can understand why people may be fatigued by the sub-genre and apprehensive about the new Bob Dylan-focused drama A Complete Unknown - as if the producers went through a list of all the most important musicians of 21st century and realised there hadn't been a straight-forward retelling of the legendary singer-songwriter's life (though Todd Haynes' experimental I'm Not There is excellent).
However, we here at JOE would argue that A Complete Unknown is definitely worth seeing. This is because it sees co-writer and director James Mangold (who famously brought Johnny Cash's life to the screen with the brilliant Walk the Line) both hitting some of the familiar beats of the biopic with such skill that it's hard not to be won over, but also sometimes eschewing them in interesting ways.
The movie stars Timothée Chalamet as a young Robert Allen Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan. The film begins in 1961 with the troubadour moving to New York City and seeking to visit the bedside of his recently hospitalised idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy in a beautiful wordless performance).
At Guthrie's bedside, Dylan meets folk icon and social activist Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, speaking with a delightful to-the-ears lilt) - who the youngster impresses with his original songs.
Soon enough, Dylan - with the help of Seeger - has a meteoric rise to fame. However, it isn't long before the 'Blowin' in the Wind' singer starts to find the expectations and limitations of the folk music scene stifling.
Seeking to experiment with electric guitars and rock instruments, he sparks the ire of the folk community who once championed him - with this coming to a head at an infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival gig.
A Complete Unknown is one of the better music biopics of recent years. This is partly because it's not a decades-spanning chronicle of an artist's life - the kind so thoroughly spoofed in Walk the Line parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - where, because of the compression of time and events necessary for a film's runtime, every person who walks into a room is extremely important and must rattle off what feels almost like a Wikipedia entry of their most famous exploits.
Instead, A Complete Unknown takes place over just four years. It eschews Dylan's pre-New York life, which makes the singer-songwriter more compelling. This is because the audience, like many of the characters, is entranced by his mystique and is trying to work out where he came from and what makes him tick.
This four-year setting also allows Mangold not only to gorgeously recreate Greenwich Village in New York in the '60s but also properly luxuriate in it.
If you take A Complete Unknown and Inside Llewyn Davis' portrayals of the era at face value, this was a time when a person could walk into a bar to escape the chilly weather and see the people who would go on to become some of the world's most famous musicians perform the most beautiful music.
It's worth noting too that when musical performances happen in this film, they often happen in full - with the movie being all the better for it.
Adding to the feeling of authenticity is Timothée Chalamet's performance, with the young actor truly disappearing into Bob Dylan - nailing his unique voice (both when talking and singing) and his eccentric laconic persona.
If A Complete Unknown has a flaw, the love triangle that develops for Dylan between his girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and folk contemporary Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) isn't quite as compelling as Dylan's slow fallout with Seeger or Dylan's fascinating pen pal friendship with Johnny Cash (a scene-stealing Boyd Holbrook).
But even though the romance plotline feels like it was pulled from a more conventional biopic, it does little to harsh the great vibes, with Fanning's portrayal beautifully sweet and sympathetic - contrasting nicely with Barbaro as the brilliantly alluring, cool, tough Baez.
And there are some great moments involving the two actresses, such as the moment Russo has an emotional reaction to watching Dylan and Baez perform 'It Ain't Me Babe' on stage - realising that the singers have a bond through music that she will never have with Dylan.
Even at a time of peak-music biopics, A Complete Unknown is a must-watch - both for fans of Bob Dylan, but also for anyone who just loves music.
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