A Complete Unknown Is Delivered by Chalamet’s Commitment to Craft

Amongst the tinsel and the strewn wrapping paper of Christmas 2024 comes a gift that keeps on giving, in the form of Bob Dylan—or more to the point, Timothée Chalamet’s take on the storied singer-songwriter’s earliest career moments in James Mangold’s riveting A Complete Unknown. Mangold’s Cop Land, Walk the Line, and Logan have impressed industry peers and audiences over the years with his versatility and utility behind the typewriter and the camera, and his script,  co-written with Jay Cocks and based on Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, emphasizes Chalamet’s unassuming poise, swagger and voice as a natural fit for Dylan.

Dylan as a character is constantly in flux throughout the film. Mangold and Cocks ground their story in a bookend form, generating intrigue in Dylan’s humble beginnings, giving us a strong purpose with which we can identify Chalamet’s strengths as a talent. Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) recognize Dylan’s skill and talent early on. Guthrie, who was convalesced at the time, believes in Dylan from the beginning while Seeger knows talent when he sees it and works to get him marketed.

The sequences between Guthrie and Dylan are seemingly the most effective—that is, until Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) appears on the stage. Baez is an established voice, where Dylan is still being discovered. From their first encounter together, though, Mangold stages a fervent competitiveness between the two characters, while at the same time, Dylan falls head over heels for Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning). Chalamet continues to hold his own as the story throws performance after performance at the audience; the actor keeps returning for more. And did you hear his singing voice? Chalamet as Dylan in singing form is exquisite.

Mangold and Cocks’ script is based on a constant reinvention of Dylan. Chalamet delivers an even-keeled physical performance along with his stunning voice. Fanning is sublime as Sylvie, an excellent foil for the ever-evolving Dylan until she’s not. Barbaro has a stellar stage presence as Joan Baez and is probably the one characterization in A Complete Unknown that doesn’t fully materialize, specifically because the character doesn’t necessarily challenge Dylan as much as she is constantly confronting him, the singular contentious point in the film. That contention is a dramatic flair for effect but doesn’t play well out of context.

Norton is equally as animated as Barbaro in playing Pete Seeger, a departure from his other performances, which plays nicely against Chalamet’s Dylan. Seeger knows where Dylan’s words come from, and the two actors have some of the film’s strongest moments, even in their steady arguments over Dylan’s desire to use electric instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Even as others believed that Dylan was a one-trick pony, Mangold, Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name, Dune, Wonka), and the music constantly evolves; it’s A Complete Unknown’s greatest strength.

Chalamet, Fanning, Norton, and the film have already received many laurels from the AFI, the National Board of Review, and the Golden Globes. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who worked with Mangold on Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, expertly puts us into the middle of Chalamet’s performances as Dylan. Papamichael creates an intimacy that matches the character and the performance as if Dylan were a modern artist.

Therein lies the other strength of A Complete Unknown: the film feels fresh despite being set in the 1960s. A Complete Unknown is less ostentatious than Elvis. Perhaps that’s part and parcel of the subject rather than the time. However, the time influences the subject just as much as the subject influences the time the story is set in, and for Dylan, the constant evolutionary revolutions he made to his music and the film sit in the thick air of timelessness, unbound to a moment, rippling across time and space.

The film’s impact on its audience is readily apparent, given its constant forward motion of character growth, never settling down long enough to take a breath. Chalamet is a literal rockstar in his own right. Of course, it helps that he’s easy on the eyes. One could be forgiven for imagining him painting a Bob Ross-inspired landscape painting going over very well for an audience. That’s how effective Chalamet is as Dylan. The actor’s intimate nature inures itself effectively onto the character in a way that benefits the audience, a striking aspect of A Complete Unknown’s commitment to its craft.

Mangold’s tight direction throughout the first two acts and, especially the bookends to the story, work so gloriously. Norton, Fanning, and McNairy all ground the film in an unexpected reality that allows the character of Dylan to rise above the other characters while keeping Chalamet down to earth. The film’s ego isn’t stuck in Dylan’s eccentricities. It celebrates them. Mind you, it’s not Red Sea-parting type sermonizing, but Dylan’s magic through Chalamet’s performance is rousing simply because it constantly evolves, and forges a new path forward, resilience intact, uncompromising, unassuming, full of piss and vinegar with the idea that change is needed and welcomed.

The third act is where A Complete Unknown stumbles. Yes, you feel the energy in Dylan’s change of direction. However, the drama and the effort that come before it don’t entirely pay off for the film without the final bookend to ultimately recover the story. If one can forge a new path through an uncompromising adaptation of oneself without losing oneself, as Timothée Chalamet demonstrates so adeptly, then surely Bob Dylan’s poetry will continue unabated through the echoed walls of history.

It isn’t very often that biopics are made about living subjects. Not to be outdone, the Robbie Williams biopic A Better Man is also underneath the multiplex’s Christmas tree this year. Well, Dylan is alive and well. The songs that Chalamet performs throughout the film are instantly recognizable continuing a high level of commitment to the craft and the subject.  Despite some heavier-handed technical struggles in the third act, A Complete Unknown is a riveting, relatable film.