'A Complete Unknown' briefing

3 (out of 4)

            It’s very well known the wheel is STILL in spin but I’ve got to finesse what I felt, say what I saw when witnessing the ever enigmatic, inscrutable, indefatigable Bob Dylan have his story fed into the Hollywood biopic machine to be leveled and laminated. Even had I never seen or loved Todd Haynes extraordinary collage of Dylan’s many modes, 2007’s radical, reflective I’m Not There — a film about the essence of an artist more than the chosen facts and figures filtered into a regimented narrative — I’d have been skeptical. Once the creators decide it’s gotta be some strain of simulacra, then you will be judged on the gaps between where your replica falls short of what was real, or sort of real. It's a different story when the mischievous 80-something Dylan himself is adding one “totally inaccurate” just to throw me off.

I’m no poet (I am however an amateurish musician) but Bob Dylan has always been an artist I’ve admired. His words are keen and penetrating, almost seemingly channeled — from the most vividly vexing verses on something like "Visions of Johanna" to protest songs as hard and uncommercial as "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," he was and remains in many ways a songwriting virtuoso. He existed in a time when popularity was more likely to be a sign of ingenuity, even greatness, than it has in any decade that followed. Authenticity was more often cherished and celebrated just like change, even in the traditional mindset of the folk scene in New York’s Greenwich Village — between the beatniks and the weirdos, from Ginsberg and Kerouac to Hendrix and the Velvet Underground, it’s a lost world of shared ideas, like 20th Century America’s brief enlightenment era, a rough and rowdy renaissance. Despite the Swifties of today, if anything modern music has become even more cloistered and pocketed by increasingly tighter sets of fans and followers amidst an inaccessible ocean of explosive over-saturation.

But the reason Dylan is relevant — at least to casuals and to director James Mangold (who must be something of a Dylanologist at the helm, especially for the first feature in 30 years and a dozen films for which he has the full control of directing, writing AND producing) — is he was a rebel, a ragged revolutionary, all the lionizing, hagiographic labels the world of music biopics love to lend mythic emphasis. They know some people only want that sweet cultural chafing, to laugh at the audiences of the past (“HA how could they not see the brilliance, the beauty of [insert artist here] for what they were? ON NO were I living back then I would’ve been WITH IT AND HIP!”) but unlike fucking Bohemian Rhapsody literally listing off quotes of out of touch critics, A Complete Unknown has to suffice by climaxing at the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival in which Bob notably got all electric on the most acoustic crowd there is. If you’re going to deify the early years as Dylan’s peak (I wouldn’t fault you, of course ’75-’76 seemed to be another ascension back to unshakable, undeniable formidability) it makes enough storytelling sense, even if I find the scope lacking Dylan’s wonderful, uncomfortably comic interactions with the press in ’65, the detour to the Deep South for the wild, thin mercury denouement in ’66, the motorcycle accident and retreat to the Basement with The Band, all before reemerging as a good ol’ country boy with a new, cleaner drawl… Look I get it, there’s only so much of the creative stew of the sixties fit for one movie, Dylan or no — but this guy was a lightning rod, seemingly absorbing the confusion and chaos of the time into the simplicity and certainty of folk music or his own beat poet’s folk rock. But, my God, this movie is all 1962 and 1965, like Freewheelin' was enough to cover the finger-pointing era, brushing over The Times They Are a-Changin’ (the album) and Another Side of Bob Dylan (he recorded it drunk in one night!!) just to get to the juicy rock’n’roll bits — make no mistake ’65 is a red letter calendar year, the axis of the world had shifted and Dylan was just a “song and dance man” making the most of it, but come on.

Despite contemporary grossness, Mangold has the good faith to not make a mess of a choose-your-own-legacy kind of figure — despite containing multitudes, I know no one wants to dwell on the 80s Christian era, even Haynes only gave it a few moments. As much as the movie labels Bob an asshole, you know this one’s for the Dylan curious even if it wants to be for Dylan devotees — watching Timothée Chalamet in interviews say the movie is a springboard for the unfamiliar makes me laugh because that is exactly what I’m Not There was, Todd gave more insight into the breadth of his musical output, the changing personas and just his damn soul, but I can’t really imagine someone being so taken by A Complete Unknown they would want to go further with him. When the movie strains too hard for sentiment or obvious ideological observations, you can almost hear Heath Ledger’s slice of Dylan from ’07 in the audience whispering, “the more they tried to make it youthful, the more the images onscreen seemed out of date…”

You never hear Dylan’s real voice in this, not once — they never utter his name in I’m Not There but you certainly get to enjoy his best cuts surrounding the diagetic jams. I applaud using live takes on set (usually saved for modern musicals) but my only proper gripe with the painfully capable acting of Chalamet is young Timothee’s voice is just too damn soft and sweet if you’re even vaguely familiar with the early sixties Dylan rasp, that nasally, harsh sound that made his lyrics sting all the more. Chalamet, however, even at his most uselessly imitative, does master Bob’s cadence and mannerisms. “I put myself in another place, but I’m a stranger there..." see THAT is an SNL parady moment sure, but the way Chalamet interprets his speaking voice (and most everything else) was quite convincing. Basically this movie usually sings when there ain’t none at all, eh maybe I bought it when he’s in harmony opposite Melissa Barrera in the Joan Baez duets, she has serious pipes, sounding “like a meadow lark” with impossible control, godDAMN those tremolos are so perfect they’re transportive, and make Chalamet’s meager miming seem pretty pedestrian.

Regardless of Timmy’s uphill battles, the rest of the movie isn’t some stale floor seat at the “Impression Olympics” — Ed Norton’s Pete Seeger is, uh, decent as our most gentle-spirited villain (“fucking silent generation...”), and Elle Fanning as Sylvie (really Suze Rotolo) is hung out to dry, the real woman most famous for an appearance on the album cover of Freewheelin', and Fanning ably translates the heartbreak of being on Bob’s shoulder during his whirlwind ascent. That Johnny Cash player (Boyd Holbrook) was frickin’ spot on from face to function, he has Joaquin Phoenix looking like an imposter, since Mangold’s own Walk the Line set the standard we now live in, even if Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story poked too much fun for it to live forever — as a fairly recurring playing here the Cash character almost makes the two pictures feel like companion pieces, one way or the other. But the shadowed supporting heft comes from Scoot McNairy, who between his afflicted characters from Batman V Superman to C’mon C’mon is a perfect hospitalized, bedridden Woody Guthrie, and in an early highlight scene is the audience for Chalamet ably offering Dylan’s early original “Song for Woody” — the movie never quite matches the tingling warmth of that spark-catching, the joy of when this genre can actually steal every edge of you attention.

But now I must say, given that I’ve seen my share of music biopics, despite my grievances at the thankless job of trying to capture someone who would never want to be reduced to some phony objectivity, this is how it’s done. You keep the dick-sucking to an absolute minimum even if the tone is more nostalgic than cynical. You avoid the “cradle to grave” arc, though next to no one does it now, Maestro is all I can think of offhand and is more youth to infirmary. But mostly you find some truth in your counterfeit concert film — lately from Respect (respectable enough, but generic) to Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (total farce, but at least not masquerading as verifiable) to Elvis (mostly glitz and gaudy reverence) and Tick, Tick... Boom! (painfully emotional and using musicals to reveal itself), there’s always stuff like the Whitney Houston movie, the Amy Winehouse movie and the Bob Marley movie (and more tacky treatments in store for Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson), seemingly after the same thing — fans and casuals, people who do not like to get deep into research and discographies and anything remotely invested. This whole film genus thrives on ignorance, not that knowing that someone cried “Judas!” in London and not the ’65 Newport Festival will make you any wiser. The studio apparatus may have swallowed Bob but damn if his story isn’t a sight better than any of the most cloying and counterproductive vacuums of biography, cult and persona, all meant to talk down to the unfamiliar and offer good boy pats for those of us that know the basics of Dylan’s (or most other musician’s) most celebrated and carefully dissected era. 

Even with my own specific ignorance of this genre sloppiest cuts, I know enough to say A Complete Unknown is the most agreeable sort of sensationalism and celebrity worship, even as Mangold struggles to uncover something new concerning this totally known unknown. Mangold is at his best in pleasing the boomers, from Walk the Line to Ford v Ferrari to geriatric Wolverine (Logan) and Indiana Jones (Dial of Destiny), the man knows his way around the studio system, and isn’t incapable of great things, one-offs like the lovely time travel romance Kate & Leopold or the robust western remake 3:10 to Yuma. The man makes immersion effortless, doubtless, and between his modest camerawork and confident enough scripting between he and Jay Cocks (behind Scorsese heavy hitters like The Last Temptation of Christ, The Age of Innocence, Silence as well as biopic practice in the form of De-Lovely’s Cole Porter story), even when tackling Dylan off the record, this is a palpable false reality, one that isn’t timeless or universal but will make the time easy passin’. It was a good movie, an almost exceptional biopic — was it a great Bob Dylan movie? FUCK no, but “what does that even MEAN, man…” It’s alright for a constitutional replay of mass production — it’s Hollywood and Hollywood only.