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Go behind the scenes of A Complete Unknown with director James Mangold and his electric cast
Trailer: Searchlight Pictures

A Complete Unknown
Directed by James Mangold
Rated R
Electrified 25 December 2024
#ACompleteUnknown

A remarkably talented cast of complete knowns make A Complete Unknown an electrifying cinematic experience.

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

It’s not a spoiler to talk about how this movie ends. It ends with one of the greatest acts of defiance in the history of music. Robert Allen Zimmerman, only a few years earlier himself a complete unknown, strolls onto the stage of the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 like a rolling stone.

His stage name is Bob Dylan.

And at this festival dedicated to folk music, he plugs it in.

His guitar.

His music.

His way.

And director/co-writer James Mangold tells this story his way. The performers – including Timothee Chalamet (Dune) as Bob Dylan, Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick) as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) as Johnny Cash – sing and play instruments – guitars (acoustic and electric), whistles and harmonicas – with such skill it’s borderline sickening to think about how much talent these people possess, particularly when some of us struggle to get a ukulele to make sounds that border on pleasant.

Mangold and his cast don’t cheat. They perform. Live. On stage. For the camera.

It is the absolute best way to film a story like this and they all sound so incredibly, ridiculously good.

Highway 61 Revisited

Here’s what A Complete Unknown is not: the typical biography movie, the bio-pic. While this is about Dylan, the musical man of mystery who came out of nowhere, this isn’t about his life, his childhood, his influences. His marriages, divorces. His children. It’s about his creative force. It’s not about the inspirations behind his songs (although there is some of that). No glass is shattered after thrown against a hotel room wall by an angry, drunk musician (or lover). But, give Johnny Cash credit where it’s due. He does break a beer bottle. It slides off a car hood after he sloppily places it there while in a somewhat inebriated state.

How, then, can a creative endeavor, a thought process, be filmed?

It’s filmed by capturing the essence of the man during the pivotal period of 1961-1965. And there’s some great dialogue to keep the ears dancing, such as when Dylan tells Baez her music is rather bland, like oil paintings in a dentist’s office. He’s looking for genuine emotion; authenticity before "authenticity" became a social media buzz word.

It’s not that Chalamet, Barbaro and Holbrook are dopplegangers of the musicians they’re portraying. The important thing is they carry their essence and Chalamet in particular sounds more and more like Dylan as the Dylan mystique grows. There’s a cut to the dimly lit streets of New York City at night and there he is in his leather jacket, poofy, curly hair and sunglasses. It’s a famous image and together, Chalamet and Mangold capture that essence perfectly.

Folk City

This is, more specifically, about a musical event. This is a movie that builds up to a moment that rocked the foundations of music. The moment when Dylan plugged in at a folk musical festival.

What’s amazing – all these decades later – is the resistance Dylan faced. Pete Seeger (so well played by Edward Norton, Fight Club) wanted Dylan to maintain the core attributes of folk music: an acoustic guitar and socially relevant lyrics. But others, including Johnny Cash, were in full support of his move in the wake of the Beatles, the Kinks and others amping it up.

Thank goodness Dylan did what he did. Those socially relevant messages can still be heard while the music is turned up to 11. Shudders to think what the world would be like if he hadn’t; even Bono has on occasion described U2 as the world’s loudest folk band while Bruce Springsteen delivered a great album with We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

Dylan pulls off what is arguably the first – or at the least one of the very first – complete reinvention. And, of course, reinvention – changing artistic direction and diving into new musical notes – doesn’t sit well with some, including Seeger. But, once you’ve had your first hit with that new sound – inevitably representing something new – that’s all any true musical gormandizer could ask for.

Don’t Look Back

Mangold also co-wrote and directed the Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk the Line, which co-starred Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Consider it something of a companion piece as Cash shows up in A Complete Unknown on occasion and offering his complete support of Dylan and the musical changes he represents.

Walk the Line, based on Cash’s own autobiographical writings, towed the line of a more traditional biographical narrative and it’s rather striking how much more enjoyable A Complete Unknown is by not following in those footsteps. Instead, Mangold turns to Elijah Walt’s book Dylan Goes Electric! for some of the source material while Dylan – reportedly – encouraged, even demanded some fictional tampering.

A Complete Unknown represents one of the most unfortunate "R" ratings in some time. It’s all because of a few strategically placed F-bombs. None delivered with any excessive level of malice, to boot. This is a movie that should be appreciated a wider audience than that restrictive rating would typically allow.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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