So how did it feel? Bob Dylan’s early years in New York have been chronicled, dramatised, riffed on and pored over more than the Last Supper. James Mangold’s biopic – told very much with the backing, though not the guiding hand of Dylan Inc – somehow achieved the impossible: keeping the people with working knowledge of the musical rota at the Gaslight Cafe as interested as those with little more than an acquaintance with TikTok covers of Blowin’ in the Wind.
And that’s perhaps the key case for A Complete Unknown to win the best picture Oscar. Sure, it’s an excellent movie with a hair-raising performance from its lead, but I think the reason so many younger or non-Dylan fans enjoyed it is, curiously, its capturing of the notion that one man’s art can give people hope for change. The fact that the film itself is very specifically about Dylan rejecting that position is neither here nor there.
A Complete Unknown captures a moment when a 19-year-old weirdo from Minnesota could arrive in Manhattan, somehow find a place to stay and scrape by (not that we see much detail on this) on the money he received after playing and passing around a hat in dingy folk clubs. Sadly, it bears about as close a relation to the realities of 21st-century life as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, a nation may have turned its lonely eyes to Dylan – only for him to stick his fingers in them – but at least the rents were cheap (and no one had social media). A Complete Unknown might not be a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s already one of the great mainstream films about the visceral power of art – and at a time when the modern political moment is overwhelming any sense of cultural resistance.
Why else does it deserve to win? Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Dylan is so good that it’s been written off by some as no more than a feat of imitation. But compare his Bob with the real one of Dont Look Back or No Direction Home and it’s clear that we’re watching a rare player here. A generational talent in the very real sense that he’s the only male actor under 40 good enough to open all kinds of movies (his last three being this, Dune: Part 2 and Wonka, for goodness sake.)
There are also impeccable supporting turns. Ed Norton is utterly taken by the kind, tender utopian spirit of Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro repositions Joan Baez as a vital artist who exists separately from Dylan, as well as someone pleasingly unwilling to take his shit (“You’re kind of an asshole, Bob”).
Then there are two scenes that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. They’re both testament to the power of drama (given that they didn’t happen). In the first, Dylan’s fabled first visit to Woody Guthrie’s hospital bedside, Bob serenades his hero with Song to Woody, the foundation stone for the entire film, and Dylan’s career. The other moment comes when Baez spots Dylan’s lyrics to Blowin’ in the Wind and the two start singing, a thrillingly tender moment of two people finding literal harmony.
Some of the main criticisms of the film can be comfortably filed under This Is Not a Documentary: principally the historical accuracy of moments such as the “Judas” cry, relocated from a crowd member in Manchester, England, to Newport folk festival, and Seeger’s anger at Dylan’s decision to go electric. (It is also worth adding that the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, one of the most significant figures in modern musical history, is done extremely dirty here – but you need an adversary.) A better criticism would be to point out that – given that the production company was approached to make the film by Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen (more on that here), A Complete Unknown is as much a portrait of the artist as a young man as it is a canny Marvel-level bit of intellectual property management.
Despite its near two-and-a-half-hours length, I was left wanting more as Dylan rode off on his motorbike in the final scene. A Complete Unknown captures the most culturally significant era of his career but, as everyone watching it knows, there are decades of fascinating Dylaning to come. Sign me up for the 10-part Netflix dramatisation of the Basement Tapes sessions.
