I walked into James Mangold’s new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, which adapts Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!, with low expectations, largely because it seemed unthinkable that any film could do justice to Dylan’s towering legacy. But to my surprise, it quickly became not only one of my favorite films of the year but one of the best musical biopics I have seen to date.
Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Dylan is so eerily accurate that in moments like the scene on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Dylan plays a raw and sparse rendition of “Masters of War” in a dingy New York pub, you can close your eyes and almost hear the bard himself — just listen to the original on Dylan’s Bootleg Series. Opposite Chalamet, Monica Barbaro delivers a similarly flawless portrayal of Joan Baez, completely vanishing into the role and capturing Baez’s endearing charm, signature fingerpicking, and evocative singing.
Mangold presents Dylan as a kind of folk antihero who arrives in Greenwich Village in 1961 like Superman dropped from the sky, armed with an acoustic guitar. Nobody knew who this kid from Minnesota was, yet he immediately immersed himself in the local folk scene, seeking out his idol, Woody Guthrie, in the hospital and soon meeting Pete Seeger, played with a wily presence by Edward Norton. It becomes clear from the outset that the folk scene, suffused with communist activists, sees Dylan as another torchbearer for its progressive causes. But Dylan, ever the iconoclast, refuses to yield. When one such activist implores, “Can songs change things?” he snidely replies that they can change keys, underscoring his disinterest in parroting anyone’s political narrative.
Seeger only latches on to Dylan because he believes he can leverage him to further his “my land is your land” hippie ideals. “We’re tipping our scales with spoons, and you come and bring a shovel,” he tells him in one scene. But Dylan had no interest in being anyone’s pawn. It is telling that in almost every scene, he is either performing, working on new songs, or riding his motorcycle to the next gig. During one televised fundraiser, Seeger attempts to put Dylan, who had recently acquired national fame, front and center, but Dylan instead drifts toward a Mississippi blues guitarist named Jesse Moffette, picks up his open-E tuning, and jams along, to Seeger’s open annoyance. This single episode encapsulates the film’s central thread: Dylan’s abiding love of “all kinds of music” and his determination to defy expectations if it means preserving his artistic freedom. More than he despises communists, Dylan simply resents anyone’s attempts to box him in.
That uncompromising spirit carries the film through its seemingly brisk two-hour runtime. Sometimes the pace moves so quickly that viewers only get snapshots of Dylan’s meteoric evolution, which saw him churn out masterpieces such as Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited within a mere six months of each other. We see him as the shy young kid at Guthrie’s bedside, then suddenly confident enough to sabotage setlists with Baez in front of thousands of fans, unwilling to keep playing worn-out protest material. Anyone who has attended a Dylan concert knows not to expect a parade of fan favorites — he only plays what he wants to play, and in those early days, that was his new material.
A standout moment finds Dylan comparing Baez’s songwriting to “an oil painting at a dentist’s office,” accusing her of trying too hard. Soon after, he’s singing, “You just kind of wasted my precious time, but don’t think twice, it’s all right.” Chalamet brilliantly channels Dylan’s famed elusive scorn, capturing both his quiet introspection and his brazen flights of ego. The film also features cameos from other country and rock luminaries, including Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Cash was a close friend who, equally averse to the activist folk scene, advised Dylan to “go track some mud on somebody’s carpet” in pursuit of new musical directions.
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Yet for all its strengths, the film raises questions about who exactly it aims to reach. Devoted fans, including me, will adore it, but younger viewers unversed in Dylan’s music might leave without a clear sense of why his songs mattered so deeply and the influence they cast on contemporary music. Then again, no film can replicate the revelation of hearing “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Like a Rolling Stone” for the first time — that moment belongs to the records themselves.
In spite of this, A Complete Unknown still offers an electrifying portrait of a singular musical force who refused to bend to any will but his own. Chalamet and Barbaro ground the film with performances that are engrossing, while Norton’s Seeger frames a clash of ideals that heightens the tension. Ultimately, it is a love letter to the Greenwich Village scene that shaped Dylan, a testament to a man who outgrew every box people tried to put him in, and a vivid depiction of the moment when American popular music changed forever. It won’t convert every newcomer, but it provides a thrilling window into Dylan’s relentless brilliance — one that might just inspire fresh ears to seek out his timeless catalog.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a computer engineer in Toronto, pursuing his MBA.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
