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It might play with a few facts, but Bob Dylan biopic presents a riveting look at his early years and schism with the folk scene.<\/p>\n
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In A Complete Unknown, James Mangold\u2019s surprisingly sharp film about Bob Dylan\u2019s ascent to fame, music is a weapon. Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), whom Dylan (Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet) seeks out as soon as he arrives in New York in January 1961, famously slapped \u201cThis Machine Kills Fascists\u201d on his guitar, but there are other means for a song to draw blood. Take the way Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) falls for Dylan when she sees him perform the homicidal disgust of Masters of War in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or how the two of them tussle on stage in April 1965 over the opening chords of Blowin\u2019 in the Wind \u2014 a symbol of what he no longer wants to be. Every performance is a flag in the ground or a shot to the heart. In fact, the whole movie feels like a bomb waiting to go off. The fuse is lit when Dylan first meets Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) at Woody\u2019s bedside, timed to detonate four-and-a-half years later at the Newport Folk Festival.<\/p>\n
Mangold and Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks have wisely stuck to the narrative arc of Elijah Wald\u2019s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! The director\u2019s 2005 Johnny Cash movie Walk The Line was a sturdily conventional biopic: rise, fall, resurrection. But for Dylan the period covered here was all rise. It was the folk scene, as Seeger imagined it, that fell. Arguably this is not really a Dylan biopic at all. Citing Robert Altman\u2019s busy ensemble dramas, the director is telling the story of a milieu rather than an individual.<\/p>\n
Our hero (or anti-hero) materialises out of nowhere, with his Huck Finn cap and tall tales about working in the carnival, as mysterious to the viewer as he was to the denizens of Greenwich Village \u2014 the clue\u2019s in the title. A Complete Unknown would make a great double bill with the Coen brothers\u2019 Inside Llewyn Davis, which ends pretty much where this begins, with Dylan sweeping into town like a coming storm: the 19-year-old It Boy who inspires wary fascination whenever he opens his mouth. \u201cHe was electric,\u201d recalls folk musician Jim Kweskin in Wald\u2019s book. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t take your eyes off him.\u201d<\/p>\n
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While most biopics are an attempt to understand and explain immense talent, this one is more about how it feels to be in the vicinity of a talent that defies such attempts. So instead of trying to unravel Dylan\u2019s motivations (a fool\u2019s errand), Mangold shows us him through the eyes of his contemporaries: Baez\u2019s cool, regal scepticism, Seeger\u2019s twinkly pride, manager Albert Grossman\u2019s (Dan Fogler) flashing dollar signs. As Seeger\u2019s wife Toshi, Eriko Hatsune barely speaks a word, but her face suggests that she\u2019s the only person who can clearly track the shifting dynamics.<\/p>\n
Being watched like that can mess with a man\u2019s head. As Dylan, Chalamet\u2019s eyes are shrewd and hooded, constantly working the angles and searching for the exits. He\u2019s the smartest person in any room, and he knows it. When he tartly compares Baez\u2019s lyrics to \u201can oil painting at the dentist\u2019s office,\u201d she snaps back, \u201cYou\u2019re kind of an asshole, Bob.\u201d He doesn\u2019t reject the diagnosis, and nor does the film. As in the Dune movies, Chalamet plays the chosen one with an underrated capacity for destruction. At times he has the air of a dangerous child, easier to love than to like.<\/p>\n
On a date with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), Dylan sees Now, Voyager and says of Bette Davis\u2019 character, \u201cShe didn\u2019t find herself. She just made herself into something different.\u201d Sly and wiry, Chalamet is playing a man whose whole life in New York was an evolving performance. As the clothes darken and the sunglasses come on, he grows increasingly mannered and alone, trapped by his own pathological contrarianism and dedication to inscrutability. He is often seen in long shot, standing apart from his supposed peers.
\u2028Beyond the tremendous core trio of Chalamet, Norton and Barbaro, all of whom learned to sing and play their songs remarkably well, lies an outer ring of vibrant performances. Will Harrison is a suitably Mephistophelean Bobby Neuwirth and Boyd Holbrook superb as Johnny Cash, the blazingly charismatic cheerleader and shit-stirrer. Norbert Leo Butz\u2019s portrayal of Alan Lomax as a bullnecked reactionary may be somewhat unfair on Lomax but does give us some hilarious lines. \u201cIt\u2019s the Newport Folk Festival,\u201d he roars. \u201cNot the Teen Dream, Brill Building, Top 40, British Invasion Festival!\u201d This machine kills purists.<\/p>\n
Mangold and Cocks tailor the facts to tell a very specific story. Fans might grumble about omissions, like the March on Washington (only glimpsed on TV) or Dylan\u2019s UK adventures, but the movie\u2019s world is a closed loop of New York and Newport and cameos of Martin Luther King or The Beatles would not have improved it. It\u2019s not particularly interested in the politics of the time, but then nor, despite initial pretences, was Dylan. Setlists and recording dates are tweaked to tighten the narrative and sharpen the themes. \u201cPeople make up their past,\u201d says Dylan, as if to forestall viewer complaints. \u201cThey remember what they want to and forget the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reportedly, the real Dylan introduced some of his own inaccuracies when he gave Mangold notes on the screenplay. He was the one who requested that his ex-girlfriend Suze Rotolo be replaced by the fictional Sylvie Russo, who gets to stay in the picture all the way to 1965, an increasingly exasperated ambassador from the realm of the normal. In a biopic that rations its cliches, only the decision to relocate the infamous cry of \u201cJudas!\u201d from Manchester \u201966 to Newport \u201965 feels like an intruder from a cheaper, sloppier movie.<\/p>\n
The most significant fabrications involve Dylan\u2019s relationship with Seeger. In reality, the two men didn\u2019t meet in Guthrie\u2019s hospital room but months later, when Seeger had already heard the buzz about the newcomer. One of the film\u2019s juiciest scenes, when Dylan gatecrashes Seeger\u2019s TV show Rainbow Quest, is also complete fiction. Seeger is made out to be Dylan\u2019s patron from day one so as to set up the patricidal drama of the journey from Song to Woody to Like a Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n
Some critics have referenced Mozart and Salieri in Amadeus but that doesn\u2019t feel right. Seeger doesn\u2019t envy Dylan\u2019s uncanny talent, he just wants him to use it in the service of peace, justice and folk music. When Dylan plays The Times They Are a-Changin\u2019 at Newport \u201964 (another deft invention), Seeger listens delightedly to the line \u201cYour sons and your daughters are beyond your command,\u201d without realising that Dylan means him, too. \u201cYou\u2019re pushing candles,\u201d Grossman tells Seeger later, \u201cand he\u2019s selling lightbulbs.\u201d<\/p>\n
With his cosy knitwear and a folksy manner that\u2019s a mere banjo string away from that of a children\u2019s TV presenter, Seeger could have been a figure of fun, but Norton and Mangold take him seriously as an idealistic champion of communal endeavour and the golden thread of tradition. He\u2019s the gentle warrior who tended the folk scene\u2019s flame throughout the winter of McCarthyism and heralded the spring. Dylan publicly called the older man \u201cso human I could cry\u201d. So when their relationship curdles into that of an embarrassing dad and an eye-rolling teenager (Cash is the hip, indulgent stepdad), the film refuses to take sides.<\/p>\n
This even-handedness is sustained through to the final showdown at Newport \u201965. As Wald\u2019s book illustrates, there\u2019s no consensus on how that chaotic, seismic three-song set was received by the 17,000 spectators, so Mangold stages it as a mythic spectacle, midway between the premiere of The Rite of Spring, a 1985 Jesus And Mary Chain gig and the Battle of Gettysburg, with Seeger and Dylan\u2019s more belligerent proxies, Lomax and Grossman, actually coming to blows. The real Lomax complained that Dylan \u201cmore or less killed the festival\u201d. It\u2019s not the amplification that causes uproar, it\u2019s the attitude. Here is the final victory of I over we; individual liberty over the greater good; the singer over the song. \u201cFreedom from us and all our shit,\u201d says Baez. \u201cIsn\u2019t that what you wanted?\u201d<\/p>\n
But what does that freedom cost him? When Dylan is coaxed back onstage to perform a solo acoustic song and he chooses It\u2019s All Over Now, Baby Blue, you realise that what you\u2019ve been watching all along is a break-up movie. Afterwards, we see him brooding alone in his motel room \u2014 no longer unknown but forever unknowable. Triumphant he is not. I was reminded of producer Joe Boyd\u2019s ambivalent account of Newport: \u201cThe rebels were like children who had been looking for something to break and realised, as they looked at the pieces, what a beautiful thing it had been.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, we know how this played out \u2014 the book isn\u2019t called Does Dylan Go Electric? \u2014 but we\u2019re still riveted because Mangold puts us in the shoes of those who had no idea. He invites us to listen like them, too, so that these 60-year-old songs sound like the future, crackling and volatile. This urgent freshness is the movie\u2019s greatest achievement. As Sylvie says of folk music, every old song was new once.<\/p>\n
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A Complete Unknown Review: Astute portrait of Dylan\u2019s riseIt might play with a few facts, but Bob Dylan biopic presents a riveting look at his early years and schism with the folk scene.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605 Dir. James MangoldIn A Complete Unknown, James Mangold\u2019s surprisingly sharp film about Bob Dylan\u2019s ascent to fame, music is a weapon. Woody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1965,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions\/1965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}