A Complete Unknown (2024) Review

rating: *****

the story: A young Bob Dylan navigates his early career while remaining stubbornly true to himself.

the review: While I was waiting for Conclave to make sense, I kept wondering what was going to pop out unequivocally to me as the best movie of 2024, and then I saw A Complete Unknown, and it was no longer in doubt.  I was going to see it anyway; catching up with Bob Dylan has been a hobby of mine for more than a decade.  I had figured out that I loved the guy's music, and I understood his role in pop music history, but it wasn't until A Complete Unknown that I got to see a version of how it played out at the time.

Biopics are a staple of American film, and musical biopics especially, these days, since it's easy to assume that the music itself will sell the movie if nothing else, just waiting for something familiar to start playing.  But the problem with biopics is that they happen to follow a basic template, and any real understanding of the artist or band in question can be lost in the details.  For instance, the other day I watched I Saw the Light, about Hank Williams, and not only is Williams lost in the movie, but even his songs are badly layered in it, so that there's no sense at all about why you should care about any of it, or what Williams meant.  

A Complete Unknown certainly has no such problems.  We catch up with Boby Dylan as he treks over to meet with his hero Woody Guthrie, who's stuck in a hospital trying to rehabilitate, while Pete Seeger basically acts as his ambassador to the world, and in turn, Bob's.  We know his goals, his talent, and his future without even reaching his best-known material, right from the start. 

The movie itself is sort of like the real world illustration of Yesterday's conclusions of what it'd be like if everyone forgot about the Beatles except one guy, who proceeds to present all their songs as if they were his own, so that he amazes everyone with his ability to generate great material.  A Complete Unknown leans on the great material available and sometimes makes it look too easy, until Bob starts running into problems because as it turns out, success or not, he still just want to be Bob, and isn't too keen to fulfil someone else's vision of him, whether it's Joan Baez or a record label or the Newport Folk Festival.

In this era of blockbuster film movie stars have struggled to stay in the picture, and certainly new ones have found it equally difficult to be noticed, but Timothee Chalamet is one of the few to have figured it out, and his Bob Dylan is a truly uncanny accomplishment, both in the music and in general.  Roger Ebert's review of Walk the Line suggested he found Joaquin Phoenix indistinguishable from Johnny Cash, and that's a considerable exaggeration, but in Chalamet's case it isn't.  Possibly this is because Bob Dylan famously isn't much of a singer (the one glaring omission of the movie is failing to acknowledge this reputation).  It really doesn't matter.  This is the central miracle that makes all others possible.

Walk the Line's Johnny Cash is here, as portrayed by Boyd Holbrook in hopefully what's finally his breakthrough role, a true creation is a career that's been floating just under wide recognition for years, including a standout performance in Logan, which like Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown, is directed by James Mangold, who between all those Wolverine movies, these biopics, and other material like Ford v Ferrari, has comfortably settled into one of my favorite and most reliable directors.

Edward Norton, once one of those late Hollywood leading actors but since settled into picking his spots in art films, inhabits Pete Seeger just as if, like everyone else Norton plays, is as comfortable being Edward Norton as it is watching him.  At this point he's the closest we've really gotten to another Jimmy Stewart.  Elle Fanning, Dan Fogler...But the biggest surprise is Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, a true discovery.  Joan Baez fans might quibble, but if A Complete Unknown has to crib from Walk the Line, then Barbaro fills out the June Carter role better than Reese Witherspoon, so effortlessly naturally it's a shock that she isn't already a star.

The film is otherwise Bob being Bob.  I have footage of the Newport Folk Festival where Bob plugs in, so the trash being tossed at him visibly didn't really happen, but the effect is there, and it's Bob dealing with the consequences of being Bob, the way his relationships faulter, the way he can't understand what's so wrong about working on new material while crashing in someone's home instead of, y'know, paying attention to them...It's always the music.  He may be uninterested in detailing his past, but for Bob Dylan, the future is ever full of the music that fills him.

Anyway, for my money, totally fascinating, engrossing stuff.  These are maverick times.  And as always Bob's the bard leading the way.