Review: Timothée Chalamet is electric in the stunning ‘A Complete Unknown’

Two decades after James Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, the director has returned with another instant classic of the genre. A Complete Unknown takes on the impossible task of depicting Bob Dylan at the height of his success and does so with style and grace.

Bob Dylan films have been attempted before, such as the inventive 2007 Todd Haynes film I’m Not There, in which multiple actors played the iconic figure. A Complete Unknown is a much more straightforward depiction of the musician’s life, but no less artistic. Mangold has only improved with age and the pitch-perfect casting of Timothée Chalamet takes him to new heights.

A Complete Unknown begins as Dylan’s success did, arriving in New York at only 19 years old. He searches for his hero and folk godfather, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who suffers from Huntington’s Disease. Dylan eventually contacts him, playing for him and fellow folk legend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) a song dedicated to Woody. From there, Dylan’s success is almost guaranteed as Seeger sees the obvious talent in his young protege. For many people in the musician’s circle, Dylan is the spark that will light the musical movement of Greenwich Village.

Most viewers of A Complete Unknown will have at least a cursory understanding of the events shown here, but Mangold successfully conveys the mindset of the ’60s to a contemporary audience. At this point, folk music was a shared collection of songs that many artists of the time would cover, with the platform being used to champion social justice. Within that, the specific use of acoustic instruments is crucial because, as Seeger says at the beginning of the film, the only thing a great song needs is a voice and a guitar.

The folk scene considered that the growing rock genre was distracting from this message by using amplified instruments and drums, which they regarded as window dressing. One of the film’s biggest accomplishments is explaining the philosophical distinction between rock and folk to a modern audience entirely used to electric instruments.

A Complete Unknown also repeatedly stresses the complexities within the folk scene. More specifically, we see how the folkies put all the hopes of a struggling movement on the shoulders of a musical visionary and assumed he’d be happy to continue to push their agenda. Rock was overtaking folk music and Dylan was their way to stay current. But the young artist didn’t want to be anyone’s pawn, his only desire was to be authentic to himself.

A Complete Unknown also succeeds in bringing genuine emotional stakes to Bob Dylan’s story. Chalamet has had a meteoric rise since early appearances in Ladybird and Call Me By Your Name, and A Complete Unknown cements him as one of the best actors of his generation. It would be easy to simply recreate Dylan’s touseled hair and unique voice to create a caricature.

Instead, Chalamet essentially becomes Dylan. His singing voice almost becomes indistinguishable from Dylan’s recorded songs while his guitar skills are beyond reproach. The most impressive thing the young actor does is take Dylan’s less glamorous qualities and root them in something real. The character in the film embarks on casual infidelity and perhaps being too honest with those around him. But this only makes the character more real and therefore more relatable.

The rest of the ensemble cast of A Complete Unknown also refuses to deal in caricatures. The film portrays Dylan’s famously contentious relationship with folk scene powerhouse Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). While she struggles to effortlessly write her own music as Dylan does, she maintains her own autonomy. She becomes enraptured with Dylan but also deals with him more straightforwardly than most, even as they carry on an affair behind the back of his girlfriend, Sylvie (Elle Fanning). The dark horse of the film is Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash, whose brief appearances are important to Dylan’s development as an artist. Their real-life friendship is shown to move Dylan to be authentic to himself in a way that no one else wants him to be.

For viewers who want to understand Bob Dylan as an artist, A Complete Unknown more than fits the bill. It’s an exemplary character study that doesn’t skimp on the hits that made the musician an enduring icon. The film is unabashedly itself, just as its subject matter is.