Timothée Chalamet brings 60s Bob Dylan to life in new biopic A Complete Unknown

“This man is my life, has been since I was 12 years old,” a white-haired man next to me said to his companion as we sat in the movie theater watching the new biopic about musician Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown.” His companion patted his leg gently, with a look that suggested this was not the first time she’d heard this. I had the feeling conversations like this were happening all over the auditorium.

The reverence and lore around the famous troubadour is thick and potent, and it permeates to the very core of this film. Adapted from Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric!,” “A Complete Unknown” takes us back to the early 60s, chronicling Dylan’s rise to folk stardom, his decision to go electric, and the shocking backlash that followed. Written and directed by James Mangold of “Walk the Line,” this is a faithful and musical biopic.

Bob is played by the elfin and captivating Timothée Chalamet (“Wonka,” “Little Women,” “Call Me By Your Name”), who seems to have adopted method acting – sporting a sparse mustache and wearing worn-out Bob-esque clothing months before the film's release. Director James Mangold, speaking about the real Bob Dylan reading the script and giving his approval, said, “I didn’t have a pre-set position, I wasn’t taking any side. From my sense of him, that’s what mattered.”

That approach proves successful. Chalamet almost perfectly embodies a young Bob Dylan when he first arrives in New York – guitar in one hand, cigarette in the other, going to visit his hero Woody Guthrie (played by Scott McNairy), who is suffering from Huntington’s Disease, in the hospital. Unlike his role in “Wonka,” Chalamet’s casting isn’t as attention-grabbing. He fully disappears into the character of Bob: lanky and morose, with messy hair, wearing a worn knit cap and brown-toned jacket, speaking in a mumbled nasal drawl.

He plays in the hospital ward for his hero, and for Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). All the guitar, harmonica, and singing lessons are evident; Chalamet’s singing and guitar playing is more impressively reminiscent of Dylan than his speaking. (“That was great,” my neighbor muttered to himself after a clear rendition of “Girl from the North Country”). From here, Bob’s rise to fame begins. When he’s not breaking women’s hearts with his irresistible aloofness, he is always playing and writing, often late into the night, and constantly smoking. He meets Johnny Cash, a scene-stealing Boyd Holbrook (“The Bikeriders”), who loves Bob’s music and wants to hear more.

During his meteoric rise, people try to figure out who the real Dylan is, and the stories he tells about himself, some of them outright lies, make it all the more complicated. He refuses to discuss his changing his last name from Zimmerman to Dylan, purposefully obfuscating his identity. The film doesn’t offer any new insight into this. Meanwhile, the United States is in turmoil: the Vietnam War is brewing; the Kennedy assassination and the Cuban Missile Crisis shock the nation; and civil rights marches and freedom rides are galvanizing.

Bob’s music becomes sharper and angrier. His jacket is now black, his sunglasses are black and permanently affixed to his face, and he starts experimenting with electric guitar. He becomes increasingly impatient with the demands of fame; impatient with the soft sounds of his folkie friends; perhaps just for the sake of being contrary. He refuses to play “Blowin’ in the Wind” at a show, and he tells Joan Baez (who he is sleeping with) that her songs are like “paintings in a dentist’s office.”

“A Complete Unknown” doesn’t shy away from the fact that Dylan was “kind of a jerk,” as Baez assesses him after that remark. While he is rude and abrupt to all genders, he is particularly unkind to women – unfaithful, careless, and dismissive. But even this is presented through the mitigating lens of genius. The few female characters are too thin to counteract this. Monica Barbaro (“Top Gun: Maverick”) is captivating as Baez, but is mostly depicted as a pretty girl jealous of Dylan’s talent. Elle Fanning (“The Great”) as his first love, Sylvie Russo, is severely underwritten, reduced to a watery-eyed gaze when Bob leaves her.

All of this leads to his first public electric guitar performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and it’s in the intense reaction to this change that Dylan’s cultural weight begins to be revealed. I had always thought the stories of people throwing bottles and booing were a bit exaggerated, but it was when someone in the film screamed “Judas!” with a genuine sense of betrayal that I truly understood the impact of his music. (This actually happened, though it was months later in Manchester, England, on Dylan’s 1966 world tour).

Not without reason. The film is peppered with renditions of many of Dylan’s greatest songs – they are truly a delight, performed with gusto by the cast, and people were happily bopping along in the theater. There is a reason Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, as the film’s postscript excitedly reports. (Though he’s not the only musician to have won the award; Indian poet and songwriter Rabindranath Tagore won it in 1913). For those diehard fans, it’s a delightful trip down memory lane, and for the younger generation who didn’t grow up in “the House of Dylan,” it’s an educational experience. (As American pop culture commentator Hunter Harris put it, dryly: “Oh, I get it. Bob Dylan was his era’s SZA.”)

Timothée Chalamet, after five years of preparing for the role (filming was delayed for years due to the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes), calls himself “a devoted member of the Church of Bob.” The film thrillingly comes close to establishing a powerful connection between Dylan’s inspiration, success, and changes, and the turbulent politics of the world around him. He was a loud voice that reflected something larger – a fierce, polarizing, and seemingly apocalyptic time that bears not a few similarities to current events in the United States.

But it spends too long dwelling on the rift between the folk musicians and the rock and roll enthusiasts, and it touches on the issues of civil rights, war, and feminism in a glancing way – most of it reflected in the background, in the form of radio and TV programs. “A Complete Unknown” is an interesting and faithful ode to an important artist. It could have, and perhaps tried to be, a reflection on the earth-shaking power of music, showing how art can change the world. But with its gaze firmly fixed on Bob’s star power, everything else is somewhat out of focus.