Bob Dylan ("Shelter from the Storm")
Modern-day biographical films about musicians embrace a great man theory of music. That is, like the great man theory approach to history, in which some believe we can understand who we are through the examination of "great men" (powerful, transformation individuals—usually men—who were immensely talented), in biographical films, music can be understood by the musical contributions of a few exceptionally talented and famous individuals. Unfortunately, this great man approach has become hackneyed. Yes, it's impressive to watch Joaquin Phoenix become Johnny Cash or Jamie Foxx become Ray Charles, but both films (though fine) were so predictable that they became low-hanging fruit for a parody film like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Some films (like Love and Mercy or Rocketman) have tried to be slightly different to avoid those pitfalls, and they mostly worked (though neither are great films), which brings me to A Complete Unknown, the James Mangold-directed film about the early years of Bob Dylan's career. A Complete Unknown doesn't try to rock the boat, though it simultaneously evades a check-the-box approach to these kinds of stories. We do see the story of young Bob Dylan, a great man of music (arguably the greatest—no other musician has an Oscar, ten Grammys, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Pulitzer, and even the Nobel Prize), and we see Timothée Chalamet deliver yet another fantastic performance in which he looks and sounds just like him. Yet fortunately for us (and perhaps mainly because it's Bob Dylan and not a musician whose life was a little more destructive), there are no scenes of him struggling with drug addiction, no scene where he gets so rich and famous that he abuses people, and no inevitable fall and glorious comeback. The biggest conflict in this movie seems to be him wanting to play an electric guitar at a folk festival.
That moment, of course, is not a simple footnote (for some reason) but a moment contentious enough that it has it's own Wikipedia page and has frequently been cited as one of the most controversial music moments in recent history. Mangold is a talented enough director that he keeps these moments intriguing, even if you know what's coming, and with an active camera that flies up and back to show us the practically rabid folk fans throwing things at Dylan and calling him Judas, all the while he's unfazed by it in the most Bob Dylan way, Mangold and his cinematographer Phedon Papamichael would make Martin Scorsese proud.
It's not simply Mangold and Papamichael who deserve credit for such a feat. Much of A Complete Unknown is a compelling watch because of its actors, especially Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and of course Chalamet as Dylan. Chalamat in particular seems to perfectly incapable of bad acting; in just this past year, he was the star of both A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part II, and the two films collectively have thirteen Oscar nominations this year. The last time Chalamet was nominated was seven years ago for Call Me by Your Name, and one could certainly make an argument that he should have won then. (He lost to a much more theatrical and make-up-intense Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.)
Anyway, in A Complete Unknown, Chalamet, Norton, and Barbaro are all worthy of their nominations due to their very impressive singing and instrumental skills. Chalamet in particular gets that unique sound of Dylan's (what Jason Kelly described as a pinched Okie sound that mimicked Woody Guthrie's) and makes it all look easy. When he sings to a hospitalized Guthrie (played in the film by Scoot McNairy), it's moving in a sentimental way when someone meets their hero and it goes just the way it should; when he plays in the studio, his voice varies between reserved and liberated (based on the character's growing comfort and musical evolution). And maybe it was all in my head, but given that he's smoking in virtually every scene, it seems like he was able to incorporate the impact smoking has on the human voice in a way that doesn't come across as painfully obvious and forced (like Bradley Cooper was as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro). But Barbaro and Norton sure can sing, too, and the most charming scene in the film (or at least the one that doesn't involve Bob Dylan) is when Norton as Seeger leads his audience in a joyful rendition of "Wimoweh."
Based on Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, A Complete Unknown avoids some of the aforementioned pitfalls of the typical biographical film about the great men of music by just focusing on his rise from 1961 to 1965. It's all a very romantic view of a struggling musician; when we first meet Dylan, he's crossing over into New York from New Jersey in the back of a stranger's car, jotting away in his notebook some notes for songs. He does it again the morning after spending a night in the home of folk hero Bob Seeger's home. Heavily promoted by Seeger as the man who can bring folk music to the masses, Dylan struggles to break through, but once he does, the rest is history. He sings at the 1963 March on Washington, courts Joan Baez (Barbaro), becomes the voice of a generation, and struggles with accepting his new-found fame.
Dylan enthusiasts whose favorite Dylan period is those early years will likely be thrilled with what they hear. A lot of those beloved tunes are included: "Highway 61 Revisited," "Mr. Tambourine Man," Girl from the North Country," "Blowin' in the Wind," "They Times They Are a-Changin," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "Maggie's Farm," "Song to Woody," "Like a Rolling Stone," and others are all there. Whether or not this film has much appeal to audience members who are not Dylan fans or musicologists or anything like that is something I'm not sure I can answer. Still, it has grossed about $100 million since it was released last December, and it has eight Oscar nominations, though (despite a superb performance by Chalamet) it is the underdog in just about all of them. One way or the other, it is a recommendable watch.
My favorite Bob Dylan songs:
Note: This list was compiled in 2020 during the pandemic. I suspect the order would be slightly different if I were to devote more time to reorganizing it these days.
49. With God on Our Side
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