A Complete Unknown (2024)

Bob Dylan has spent the better part of six decades resisting easy definition, which makes him both irresistible material for a biopic and a genuinely awkward subject for one. A Complete Unknown, released in 2024 and running at just over two hours, charts the early chapter of that story: a teenage Robert Zimmerman arriving in New York's Greenwich Village at the turn of the 1960s, reinventing himself as Bob Dylan, and then spending the rest of the decade dismantling every expectation his audience had of him. It is a period rich with genuine drama, from the folk revival scene centred on Washington Square Park, to Dylan's controversial pivot to electric rock at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and the film leans on all of it for atmosphere and incident.

At the helm is James Mangold, a director who has shown a consistent knack for character studies built around men operating under enormous pressure. His work ranges considerably in tone and scale, from the stripped-back grit of Cop Land to the kinetic, fact-based racing drama Ford v Ferrari, but a recurring quality across his best films is an interest in what it costs a person to be exceptional at something. That preoccupation makes him a reasonable fit for a Dylan picture, at least on paper. The screenplay, which Mangold co-wrote with Jay Cocks, draws partly on Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, focusing its attention on Dylan's relationship with the folk establishment, particularly his friendship and creative tension with Pete Seeger, and his romantic entanglements during a period of rapid personal and artistic change.

The cast assembled is, on the face of it, strong. Timothée Chalamet, who has built a reputation for quiet intensity in films such as Call Me by Your Name and Beautiful Boy, takes on the considerable challenge of playing Dylan, performing the songs himself rather than miming to recordings. Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro takes the role of Joan Baez, and Elle Fanning and Scoot McNairy fill out the principal ensemble. It is, by any measure, a polished but demanding set of performances to sustain across 141 minutes, and the musical sequences alone represent an enormous technical undertaking. Whether the film uses all of that talent to its full advantage is, of course, the question worth asking. Music biopics as a genre have a habit of substituting event for interiority, and with a subject as deliberately opaque as Dylan, that is a particular hazard. For another example of the form done rather differently, it is worth glancing at Amazing Grace, which takes a very different approach to putting a musical legend on screen.

In terms of biopics, it just isn't as good as others. Walk the line, Bohemian Rhapsody, the list goes on. Timothy Chalomet and the actress who played Joan Baez were absolutely FANTASTIC in their roles and the soundtrack was understandably incredible, but there's where the movie ends. It lacks substance. There's very little depth to the movie. It didn't delve really into Bob Dylan... just a play by play of his music.

And that gap between surface and substance is really what lingers with me. The music is the music, it cannot disappoint, and Chalamet's commitment to the role is plain to see, but commitment and illumination are not the same thing. A biopic about one of the most written-about, analysed and mythologised figures in twentieth-century popular culture has an obligation to offer something beyond the chronology, some sense of the interior life behind the mythology. When it does not quite get there, two hours and twenty minutes starts to feel like a long way to travel for a playlist. There is a good film lurking somewhere in this story. I am just not sure this is entirely it.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 2024  | Watched: 2025-05-16

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for A Complete Unknown (2024) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
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Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · YouTube TV · HBO Max
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