A Complete Unknown Review
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A Complete Unknown
Searchlight
R. 141 min
Bob Dylan is absolutely a genius and absolutely one of the very few icons of music of any kind. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is a biopic by James Mangold adapted from a book called Dylan goes Electric by Elijah Wald. Musical icons are almost always generational, and Bob Dylan's was a slice of Americana after the beatniks but before the British Invasion including a particularly violent part of the civil rights movement and the anti-war activity. My own popular music awareness came about in 1964 when the Beatles took the World by storm. That means for my specific age group, and many like me, the appreciation for Bob Dylan dovetails into the fact that John Lennon believed he was brilliant, q feeling apparently not reciprocated by Dylan himself. I'd be tempted to label this film as a cookie cutter biopic if it weren't for the fact there was so much about Dylan's early career that I wasn't aware of. Historically when Dylan went Electric it was a major brouhaha among the traditional Folk aficionados. Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Peter Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio on and on were all adamant that folk music was the music of the people and moreover played on acoustic instruments. The watershed as these two factions clashed took place at the Newport Rhode Island Folk Festival. That particular melee is the climax of this film but not actually what it's all about. It could be more rightly described as a love story, a triangle that included Dylan, his girlfriend and benefactor Sylvie a publishing heiress, and Joan Baez played by Timothee Chalmet, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro respectively. Chalmet is a veteran Broadway musical star so playing the music and singing in the songs comes as second nature to him though word has it that Barbaro had to actually learn to play guitar for the role. Here's the conflict: Sylvie loved every upper-class New York liberal benefit that crossed her path and she loved taking in Starving Artists of which Dylan was certainly one at that time. Dylan himself was ignorant to the rules of business and though he wrote great songs wasn't really attractive or vocally talented enough to perform them in order to appeal to the record buying masses. Joan Baez sang well, was beautiful and made Millions singing other people's songs including Dylan’s. Of course if they folk / pop buying public didn't appreciate his writing skills others including Pete Seeger Woody Guthrie and even Johnny Cash did. Seeger, (Edward Norton) however, was true to the acoustic music roots and took issue with his friend Dylan when he decided to go electric, but you know the drill; The Times They are a changing, to coin a phrase.
The acting is excellent across the board the stories fill in some missing pieces many of us didn't know before, or at least understand very well. And yes and what happened after the motorcycle accident that was responsible for Highway 66 Revisited but that is a different story for a different movie. Of course Bob Dylan himself labels this film, as well as the book rubbish. Then again Dylan is, and always has been, somewhat of a pain in the ass and that is one of the reasons the movie and book exist.
B+
WSS
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