As the 97th Oscars award ceremony approaches, we are seeing an increased interest in a range of films from across the globe. And personally, the film that I was most excited to see was James Mangold’s biopic starring Timothée Chalamet titled A Complete Unknown. As a Dylan fan I went into the cinema uncertain yet excited to see how Chalamet would portray him. Biopics, and in particular music biopics have remained a staple of award ceremonies in recent years. Films like Elvis and Bohemian Rapsody were very popular at the Oscars, and the latter even won the award for Best Picture. This trend of so called “Oscar bait” biopics doesn’t appear to be slowing down, films about Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles are already on the way, and will no doubt be in contention for a multitude of awards.
One factor of these films that often faces criticism is the broadness of content they aim to convey. Most follow the format of aiming to cram as much of a musician’s life as possible into the runtime, often risking quantity over quality. A Complete Unknown is no such film. Mangold focuses on a uniquely short, but vital, part of Bob Dylan’s career. It chronologically focuses on the four-year period between 1961 and 1965, and instead of featuring montage flashbacks focuses specifically on Dylan’s rise to fame and the evolution of his music from folk to the controversial “electric Dylan”.
The title of the film, taken from Dylan’s pivotal song “Like a Rolling Stone”, remains prevalent throughout the film. Chalamet’s portrayal keeps the musician at somewhat of an arm’s length. Questions about his past are brought up by characters in the film, he claims to have worked in a circus, but they are never answered. Mangold’s direction proves that they don’t need to be answered within the narrative, this film is a snapshot into a specific era in American musical history, it does not aim to attain any sense of revelation into the character of the icon Dylan.
It is in this way also de-mystifying; the image of Dylan as mysterious and intellectual is deconstructed in an enjoyably humorous way. At many times throughout the film, particularly in his interactions with various women, Chalamet conveys Dylan as rather arrogant and unlikeable. The focus remains largely on musical progression over character progression, leaving no great lessons learnt and many of the conflicts in the film being left unresolved. We only receive an answer to the outcome of these conflicts in a brief text at the end of the film.
Through focusing on such a short time span, Mangold conveys a youthful Dylan who is undeniably talented and a phenomenal songwriter, but also a brash and confident young man in his twenties dealing with fame. This limelight of electric music and psychedelic lyrics is wonderfully contrasted against the simple folk songs that Dylan starts the film playing. This film concludes with an exaggerated but nonetheless dramatic portrayal of the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival. A Complete Unknown is a unique and welcome addition to the genre of musical biopics and gives a humorous and nuanced tribute to an icon of American music at the fascinating peak of his fame.