de facto film reviews 3.5 stars

A Complete Unknown, based on the book Bob Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, is the newest film from director and co-writer James Mangold. In 2005, Walk the Line, a biopic also helmed and co-written by Mangold, appeared, detailing the life and career of Johnny Cash, in a sensational work of emotion and ugly truths. Given that Bob Dylan is a far less knowable figure than Cash, the only previous director to tackle the subject, Todd Haynes, elected to split aspects of Dylan’s perceived persona across time and place as well as individuals. This is not that film and while in that sense it is conventional, it is nonetheless one of the year’s very best films.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

Unlike the Cash film, A Complete Unknown is more focused, telling of Dylan’s rise to fame and switch to electric. It is a tighter story than Walk The Line, given its four-year span. This is not a biopic, though it has elements of that, in that we do see how the artist’s life unfolded during this time, but even then, the spotlight is not as much on the personal as on the professional and artistic, with some of the best elements being how Dylan affects those in his orbit. Here, Dylan is not made to look the part of an angel. You may, however, get to understand him a bit better, given that he appears at first somewhat introverted if bold. This is a film about expressing yourself while being haunted by expectations and learning to hold true to yourself amidst enormous pressure.

This is a film that does convey, more than many, the ways in which commerce and art intertwine, and how a person can be two things at once. The film shows Dylan’s progression from the young man that impresses Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger with his love of music and obvious ability, to a complex artist who seems to want to be himself in spite of the fame and expectations locking him in. This is the way in which the film allows one to understand that, yes, as Joan Baez says in one scene, and to which Dylan agrees “you’re kind of an asshole, Bob” but one can understand his furious need to remain himself. His friends and colleagues want him to remain where they found him, and be their guiding light, but he finds himself drawn to continue evolving and not be tied down. He does not so much turn his back on people as draw a personal line he will not let anyone cross.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

This is a flawed, human depiction and Timothee Chalamet has never been better, giving one of the best performances of the year. Chalamet embodies his role without resorting to mere mimicry. Chalamet manages to demonstrate interiority in a way that is fresh, and so subtle you might not realize what you are seeing until the film is over. His is not the only superb performance. Ed Norton is in rare form as the emotional, folksy and desperate to save the world through folk music Pete Seeger. Dan Fogler, as Al Grosman, Dylan’s longtime manager, gives the film some much needed humor. Monica Barbaro is a fitting Joan Baez. Finally, Ellie Fanning’s Sylvie Russo may just break your heart. Hers is a performance of such raw emotional intensity, underplayed, that as with Chalamet, it will not be until later that you know what you’ve witnessed.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

The period detail is excellent, and the film uses dozens of on-screen performances of songs, many in their entirety, from Dylan as well as folk and rock standards of the time. This is a film with a real sense of change. Dylan, in lesser hands, would be the sole agent of change, but he is presented here as part of a growing movement, including people like Johnny Cash, who wanted to fight trends and create new standards. As with other Mangold films, the script is intelligent and the direction serves the story and characters. This is not an art film, but it is a great look at the creation of art and of the birth and rebirth of an artist. It is a film, much like a Dylan song, to be experienced for yourself. If the film has a flaw, it is that the subject itself is hard to know and so it becomes about the scene and the art as much as the person, and there are details of the time and Dylan’s life and career which were not included. That does not excessively harm the picture.  Do not miss one of the year’s very best films.

A Complete Unknown opens in theaters on Christmas Day.