‘A Complete Unknown’ Review: Chalamet is Great, but Film Succumbs to Familiar Biopic Pitfalls of a Life Collapsed into Montage [C+]

It’s hard to ask for a more routinely workmanlike filmmaker than James Mangold. Whether working in the realm of mental health drama (Girl, Interrupted), big IP franchises (The Wolverine, Logan, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), or ultimate TNT Dad-movie mode (Ford v Ferrari), his even-handed approach assures an experience that’s technically accomplished but lacking in much further emotional or intellectual acuity. He consistently pulls out all the stops to make the most “not bad” movie possible.

This may be most true for his Oscar-winning foray into the music biopic genre with Walk the Line, a film that so staunchly epitomized the “rise-and-fall of a towering figure” narrative arc that the genre inevitably conforms to, it’s now hard to watch it without the cult classic parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story playing concurrently in your mind. Thankfully for Mangold, the subject of his newest foray into the genre, A Complete Unknown—charting the sudden wave of popularity found by Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) in the ’60s—doesn’t conform to those exact narrative beats that were ruthlessly lacerated. Or, at least the film’s subject isn’t written to go through them in Mangold’s and Jay Cock’s script, based on Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.

Zeroing in on this period of Dylan’s career means the narrative trajectory begins, naturally, with humble origins, but culminates with Dylan’s controversial shift in style from traditional, stripped-back folk to a more modern, electric guitar-driven rock and roll. This transformation reached a historic point at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan and his band unleashed their new sound, drawing a divisive reception. Situating the crux of the film around this artistic metamorphosis proves to be a more compelling alternative to the typical incident found in biopics, especially with the added context of Dylan’s internal turmoil over becoming the voice of a generation that he never asked to speak for. Yet, A Complete Unknown still broadly fits into the same familiar mold that Walk the Line inhabited 20 years ago. Despite a more enigmatic, fascinatingly paradoxical subject, Mangold has assembled what can largely be chalked up to just another legendary figure biopic, following the same thematic arc found in every other film of its ilk.

Or perhaps it is exactly because Dylan is such an inscrutable figure that a film with as much commercial appeal as A Complete Unknown was bound to defer back to more accessible means of conveying his story and artistry. Though, thankfully, we omit any extraneous childhood upbringing to jump right into the beginnings of Dylan’s career as it kicks off in earnest when Dylan spontaneously drops in on his folk hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), incapacitated in the hospital as he battles Huntington’s disease. He stumbles upon Guthrie being visited by fellow folk performer and activist Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), and after impressing the two with a song played on the fly, Seeger invites the young, eccentric drifter into his home as he gradually becomes his advocate, pulling strings to put Dylan up at notable clubs of Greenwich Village.

It’s here that events settle into your typical procedure spanning across an overly-generous runtime of 140 minutes: a greatest hits reel of Dylan’s life throughout this section of years, charting his live performances, his professional and personal relationships, and the development of his more famous hits as his fame suddenly skyrockets, leaving him unable to walk down the street without being mobbed by fans. Many of these components are effectively conveyed within a vacuum, thanks to a robust creative team. Mangold brings on his longtime cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and the two craft a lovingly, warmly textured vision of 60s America, from the Village folk scene and beyond. Sequences at small clubs are frequently gorgeously shot and lit, with a soft, luminous radiance lighting up Dylan and fellow performers on stage. The streets of New York feel genuinely alive with authentic production design that makes the vintage setting feel like more than just a put-on. A Complete Unknown is full of cozy, appealing images to get lost in, that are in service of a biopic that operates in a notably more quiet, gentle register than others that utilize reality as a means to magnify melodrama.

Of course, this brings us to the actor at the center of so many of those frames. Any actor risks becoming a cartoonish caricature when portraying someone with as distinct a persona as Bob Dylan, but Chalamet pulls it off with impressive naturalness. He convincingly conveys Dylan’s transition from a sheepish, awkward prodigy to a sunglass-adorned, motorcycle-riding rock star, and he also holds his own when imitating Dylan’s singing. His interpretation of Dylan’s slurring, nasally mumble transforms from self-consciousness to a nonchalant, cool apathy, unconcerned with much else other than his own ambitions. Mangold and Cock’s characterization is admirably non-obsequious, portraying Dylan as an unambiguous genius prone to selfishness, navigating tumultuous relationships with Seeger, fellow performers, and his on-and-off partners: artist Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and folk contemporary Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).

Everyone inhabits their real-life counterparts with graceful ease, effectively conveying the emotional turmoil of being caught in the orbit of someone as self-destructive as Dylan, though the script doesn’t always afford each player a satisfying amount of depth, revealing a particular struggle in giving either of Dylan’s lovers their own lived-in identity. Taken together, each moment of Dylan’s life and career feels like an interesting snapshot, but one that might be more thoroughly explored elsewhere, as opposed to the sudden cut to the postscript that undercuts the crescendo the film builds to. This includes Dylan’s difficult relationship with his artistry and stardom—ostensibly the essence of the drama. The film foregrounds the turbulent social reckonings of the ‘60s to provide context to the generational challenges for which Dylan became a cipher and includes the requisite asides of him getting fed up with his management and fanbase. Yet, the compression of history ensures the ideological complications living within him are left frustratingly one-note.

In that sense, A Complete Unknown fulfills the promise of what it was always going to be: a surface-level glimpse at the life of an icon, ultimately insufficient for communicating the true nuances of his identity. You couldn’t ask for a more lovingly crafted period piece or a film more faithful in its representation of the social habits and mannerisms of Bob Dylan, but there’s nothing this film says about his persona or artistry that isn’t more deeply felt in something like Inside Llewyn Davis. There’s a one-of-a-kind specificity to Dylan as an artist, but he’s wrestled into an all-too-familiar template. To harken back to Walk Hard, Bob Dylan may not have to think about his entire life before he plays, but it flies by in routine montage all the same.

Grade: C+

Searchlight Pictures will release A Complete Unknown on Christmas Day.