“A Complete Unknown” follows the veiled folk music legend Bob Dylan as he spins his audience around like a plate on a stick, bearing witness to the growing spectacle of his vaudevillians rise to fame.
I had high expectations walking into the theater to watch “A Complete Unknown,” no more than a handful of days after it was released. I only knew about as much as a day’s worth of a music appreciation class could teach about Bob Dylan, but one thing was clear: he was the deceptive Michael Jackson of folk music.
Bob Dylan is a legendary figure in music history, eclipsed in the 60s only by other legendary figures such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Ironically, Dylan hid himself more than anyone else could have, frequently lying and manipulating his character for whatever reason he saw fit.
Simply put, he told stories.
Timothée Chalamet, adding to his legendary run of stellar performances, plays Dylan in the biopic.
His performance is incredible in this film. Within mere moments, he loses his familiarity and disappears into Dylan.
His dedication to the film, and therefore Dylan, is nothing but evident throughout the entire film. He speaks, rambles, mumbles and sings just like Dylan does, not to mention he looks surprisingly like Dylan did in the ‘60s.
Edward Norton plays fellow folk music legend and de facto protagonist Pete Seeger and does a phenomenal job at it as well. You can really feel the warmth in his smile, the love in his home and the tender care he has for those close to him.
It’s the blend of the two actors’ performances that makes their personal disputes and their growing distance in the film so gut-wrenching. Seeger’s contentious suggestions and Dylan’s detesting eye-rolling clash like two fighting brothers who were born to love one another.
We, as audience members, are close by but ironically distant from Dylan as we watch him achieve stardom and work through a sea of relationships, expectations and ultimately, as Dylan internalizes, cages to confine him. The audience ends up being strung along through his life and his ambiguity, the same way he plays fast and loose with those around him.
Part of the fun of the film, though, is solving the mystery of his existence and choices. Within each scene, the desire to crack open Dylan’s hard, self-constructed, and both delightfully and dreadfully flippant exterior is palpable.
You really feel a hunger to understand Dylan, and therefore, can only empathize with the growing number of women he leads on.
In all honesty, before I realized the similarity between the audience and the characters in Dylan’s life, I felt dissatisfied with the film. I didn’t like how I didn’t have all the answers and how I didn’t understand why Dylan did what he did.
However, that’s why the film is good. It perfectly captures the mystery and mystique that enamored everyone with Dylan and the grief of those who got close enough to get caught in his web of lies.
We watch him tell his stories to climb the ladder of success closer to the peak and enjoy the fruits of disengagement on every rung. In other words, we see him both get the job done and enjoy the frills along the way when they sound good to him – the exact same way he approaches music.
Comments