Mangold, Chalamet create a biopic worth a watch—and a listen
Writer/director James Mangold is no stranger to a music biopic. In 2006, Reese Witherspoon won a Best Actress Oscar for playing June Cash in Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. The movie garnered four other nominations, including a nomination for Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of Cash. Now 18 years later, don’t be surprised if A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s dramatization of Bob Dylan’s rise to fame, yields similar awards for its exceptional cast.
Mangold, who co-wrote the script with Elijah Wald and Oscar-winning screenwriter Jay Cocks (Gangs of New York), smartly doesn’t try to tell the entire story of Dylan, the Minnesota-born singer/songwriter who became a legend of the ‘60s folk music scene and whose career longevity and success made him the only American songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Instead, Mangold focuses on a brief four year period beginning with Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961, though his initial meteoric rise in the Greenwich Village folk scene, and culminating in his groundbreaking, infamous switch from acoustic to electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Mangold doesn’t bog the script down with backstory. Instead he shines a light on Dylan’s culture-changing music and how it dazzled listeners at the same time it channeled the angst and unease of a generation coming of age in a period rocked by social and political upheaval. As Dylan, Timothée Chalamet performs so much of Dylan’s music–and so uncannily well–that the film feels almost like a musical.
Chalamet doesn’t sound like Dylan, and Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, possesses nowhere near the same vocal power as Baez. But they both create authentic enough facsimiles of two hugely talented young people bursting onto the world stage for the first time that the viewer always feels just as immersed and invested as those who witnessed the real versions. And refreshingly, Mangold doesn’t over explicate to younger audiences who may be unfamiliar with Dylan’s canon, but lets Dylan’s songs speak for themselves.
Even though we never get a sense of Dylan’s creative process, we understand, by the reactions of those around him, that his is a unique and remarkable talent in an era hungry for fresh and relevant sounds and stories. Chalamet portrays Dylan as driven and aware enough of his skill to be abrasive and egotistical. But Chalamet’s performance is also complex enough to allow us to see Dylan’s struggle with his unexpected fame and his need to keep expanding his artistic output, even as his fans, colleagues, and producers try to keep him pigeon-holed as an acoustic folk musician.
While Chalamet’s performance alone is reason enough to see the film, Mangold has also assembled a stellar supporting cast. Edward Norton is terrific as Pete Seeger, playing him as a folk father figure to the young Dylan, whose awe at Dylan’s talent wavers between pride and frustration as Dylan begins to move away from the traditional folk music that Seeger loves and values. Boyd Holbrook shines as Johnny Cash, and Scoot McNairy is impressive as Dylan’s idol Woody Guthrie in a non-verbal role that still speaks volumes.
Elle Fanning deserves props for going toe to toe with Chalamet and holding her own as Sylvie, a fictional love interest created for the movie based on Dylan’s real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo. Fanning’s Sylvie is smart, strong, and independent, and yet even as she has no illusions about Dylan’s fidelity, she can’t help but be wounded by his unfaithfulness. A scene in which Sylvie stands backstage watching Dylan and Baez perform a duet is a masterclass in understated acting, as Fanning wordlessly lets us know that just by looking at the pair she understands their connection is more than merely a musical one.
Finally, Mangold’s production and costume design and sharp eye for period detail capture the New York of the early 1960s with a veracity reminiscent of television’s similarly set Mad Men. While we don’t learn Dylan’s whole life story, the snapshot Mangold and Chalamet do present is so well executed that we never feel like we’re missing anything. Instead, A Complete Unknown enables us to experience the same, genuine, you-are-there moments as those who first heard Dylan’s music. They knew they were hearing something special, and, as we watch this engrossing picture unfold, we do, too.
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A Complete Unknown opens widely today.
