In 1965, Bob Dylan released the song “Like A Rolling Stone.” Sixty years have passed since then, but this song and its lyrics have become embedded in the DNA of pop and rock culture. Like a modern book of psalms, quotes from the song became known on their own.
The song’s title, for example, inspired the name of the rock magazine “Rolling Stone,” founded two years later. That magazine named “Like A Rolling Stone” the greatest rock song of all time in 2004.
When Martin Scorsese directed a long and comprehensive documentary about Dylan, he called it “No Direction Home,” a line from the chorus.
And now comes a narrative film telling Dylan’s story at the start of his career, called “A Complete Unknown,” the next line in the song (so all these phrases rhyme).
This was the song in which Dylan moved from acoustic to electric guitar, from folk to rock.
This is the song in which Dylan, who the world had only heard of four years earlier, sought to reboot his career and reputation.
To be a homeless wanderer, to become completely unknown again.
James Mangold’s new film casts Timothy Chalamet as Dylan from ages 19 to 24, from the moment he hitchhikes to New York from Minnesota, straight to Greenwich Village in 1961.
This is the most beautiful scene in the film. It is first impressive cinematographically with period design and the young Dylan’s look of awe and wonder, feeling he has finally arrived at the place he dreamed of, a place that can recognize talent like his and welcomes someone who hides his past in rural Middle America.
But it is also a glimpse of an exciting moment in American cultural history. This is the village that became legendary two and a half streets overflowing with creativity. Music and singing in every corner. Even the beggars, the homeless, and the street vendors are artists poets, musicians, muses. This is America where President Kennedy has just entered the White House, the Cold War will bring the world to the brink of nuclear anxiety, and the streets buzz with political activity for human rights and fighting discrimination and racism.
Folk music becomes not only the anthem for this reality but also a weapon with which artists try to change it. Into this world, where one star has left the stage and another has risen, comes the young Dylan to make a revolution.
Mangold’s film is not a complete biography of Dylan now 83, a versatile artist who tried almost every medium but only a documentation of a few years. Mangold, born in 1963, depicts one of the most famous moments in American rock history, when Dylan decides to turn away from acoustic folk music and move to electric guitar.
Dylan arrives in New York following his hero, Woody Guthrie, hospitalized in a sanatorium, where he meets folk singer Pete Seeger, who immediately realizes he has discovered a star. Seeger and Joan Baez give him a first stage and help the world discover him. But soon Dylan is drawn to the noise, energy, and adoration of the Beatles, Elvis, and rock and roll, making a musical U-turn.
There are many beautiful things in “A Complete Unknown,” yet it is a film that does not succeed or perhaps does not even try to be engaging or moving. Timothy Chalamet was cast in 2019, but the pandemic postponed filming. Chalamet then entered commitments with another production, Mangold directed another film, and then strikes delayed it further.
This gave Chalamet five years of training performing Dylan’s songs himself, and he does a wonderful job. It’s not merely imitation of voice and body language but the ability to make us believe he is truly someone who refuses to follow rules, committed only to himself. This is Dylan walking with his gaze to the ground, shoulders hunched to curl away from strangers’ eyes, beginning with awe that turns to scorn and contempt for the music industry.
Every time someone expects him to be one thing, Dylan insists on being another. We never fully understand why. Why is he like this? Why does he suffer when loved? It may be an accurate portrait of Dylan, but also of a somewhat unbearable, chronically obstinate, and betraying person.
He betrays friends and collaborators, disappoints those who expect him to make folk music more popular. The recording of “Like A Rolling Stone” becomes a key scene, showing his shift in direction and defining who he has become a rolling stone, always moving forward, leaving everyone behind. He appears at Café Gaslight, invited courtesy of Seeger to the Newport Folk Festival, where electric instruments are forbidden. He ignores the rule.
Mangold previously directed a beautiful biography of Johnny Cash, “Walk the Line,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. In a magical moment of self-reference, the one who convinces Dylan to throw the rules away is Cash himself (played by Boyd Holbrook), who meets him at Newport and tells him to rebel, break instruments, answer to no one. “A Complete Unknown” thus becomes a sister work to “Walk the Line.”
Mangold is usually an excellent director, and his best films from “Heavy” and “Cop Land” to “Logan” carry the scent of folk and country ballads. “A Complete Unknown” is a successful introduction to Dylan for a generation that likely knows his songs through covers rather than the original. But it also centers on an antagonistic character. Talented, genius, drawing everyone along, yet hurting everyone he meets. Watching the film the first time, I wondered why make a Dylan film where no one likes Dylan.
The second viewing revealed the point Dylan in “A Complete Unknown” is not the hero; he is the antagonist. He has no clear goal; he wants to be passive like a rolling stone. The hero of the film is Pete Seeger, and Edward Norton does an amazing job portraying him. Seeger is conscientious, political, socially and musically committed, full of emotion without cynicism. He believes music can change the world. He sees Dylan as the one to make folk a global sensation. But Dylan, erasing each phase of his life, proves a false messiah.
He uses Seeger to succeed, then betrays him. From Norton’s perspective, the film is a sad, heartbreaking story of a tragic figure who believes art can fix the world, only to bet on the wrong person and surrender to ego. The emotion of “A Complete Unknown” resides in Seeger’s eyes. Dylan once sang, “You gotta serve somebody,” and here he serves only himself. The character increasingly becomes a shadow, not wanting to be seen, perhaps why telling his story on film is so difficult.
Six Dylan Moments in Cinema
“Don’t Look Back” (1966) is one of the best and most groundbreaking documentaries. Watching it after “A Complete Unknown” feels like a sequel, taking place just after 1965 with many of the same figures.
“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” (1973). Dylan wrote “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” for this Sam Peckinpah western, which introduced him to film production. Dylan also played a small role as a murderer helping Billy escape.
“Wonder Boys” (2000). Dylan has Grammys, a Pulitzer, and a Nobel, but also an Oscar for a song in Curtis Hanson’s film adaptation of Michael Chabon’s work. He appeared via live broadcast from Australia, where he was on tour.
“No Direction Home” (2005). The place to learn Dylan’s biography. Martin Scorsese directed this documentary series using hours of interviews collected over years. It likely informed Mangold’s research for “A Complete Unknown.”
“I’m Not There” (2007). Not a biography but a film inspired by Dylan’s music and enigmatic persona. Five actors and one actress play six characters of different ages, races, and genders, representing aspects of Dylan’s life.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013). Not directly about Dylan, but about the period when he first arrived in New York, showing a fictionalized figure influenced by real people of that era. Coen Brothers capture the struggle of musicians seeking recognition, which Dylan will suddenly achieve overnight.