Long after the concluding credits of A Complete Unknown, Writer-Director James Mangold’s (Walk the Line, Wolverine) very good new Bob Dylan biopic, the music will resonate. It is music that responded to and in turn shaped its times. Is it now a call to more action or the laconic echoes from a better time?
Mangold does an admirable job re-creating the early sixties journey of Bob Dylan’s rise from “complete unknown” folk singer to the shaggy, contrarian individualist, and creative colossus that launched thousands of acoustic guitars to question American society and politics. The film tracks the youthful songsmith from 1961’s plaintiff protest ballads through the electrifying folk rock revolution he unpacked at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
As much parts self-gratifying self-discovery as demand to change the world, Mangold captures all that in this Dylan distillation! And if you look closely enough, you will see through Dylan’s eyes what Manigold yields to us, a bit wistfully pained.
From this slim plot line hangs a who-is-who of American folklore. Dylan starts by seeking out the earlier generation’s musical rebel Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy) who has “This Machine Kills Fascists” adorning his guitar. Dylan’s extemporary audition for the hospitalized Guthrie is attended by legendary folk music hero The Weavers’ Pete Seeger (Ed Norton).
The popular Weavers had already been blacklisted from concerts because of their alleged Communist ties and strong Guthrie-like socialist messages. As it turns out, both Guthrie and Seeger were more politics than the countercultural Dylan could digest.
Still, Seeger is so impressed with the tribute piece dedicated to Guthrie that he brings Dylan into his house and musical community. Dave Van Ronk, Barbara Dane, Maria Muldaur, and Peter, Paul, and Mary pass too quickly before us. We can only wonder where Phil Ochs and Ian and Sylvia were?
One major flaw is the film’s under-development of Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), Dylan’s longtime lover and the undisputed queen of the mid-century folk kingdom. A bit too much time is spent on Dylan’s instigative friend Johnny Cash and not enough on Ed Norton’s incisive definition of Pete Seeger. Norton’s Seeger is the moral north star of the Folk Music Movement.
Clearly, the film belongs to Dylan, whom Timothée Chalamet has through hard work and study gracefully rendered. The mannerisms, the voice, the physical appearance, and the diffident swagger framed the rich imagery and questioning strident lyricism that has captivated youth from the sixties on. Chalamet channels the essence not only of how Dylan could weave his spell but also of the individualistic character that pushed his success – first as acoustic troubadour and then as electronic iconoclast.
By film’s end, we understand the rootless, peripatetic, essentially American character which pushed Dylan from place to place, relationship to relationship, and genre to genre. He largely abandoned the social and political causes that he rode in on. The causes and injustice were still there, but he had restlessly fled on in other directions, always moving through and away.
Just as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie remained true champions of progressive change, Dylan wandered. Seeger’s communism, Baez’s pacifism, and Guthrie’s prairie socialism were beacons for later generations. Dylan’s early incandescence, on the other hand, flickered.
Perhaps we ask too much from our heroes. Is it enough to be startlingly brilliant, to raise consciousness as one defines art form? Can we also demand committed defined leadership flowing from art? In deed and word, Dylan answers our question, our longing . . .
You say you’re looking for someone
Who’s never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain’t me, babe
No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe
It ain’t me you’re looking for, babe.
A Complete Unknown is certainly a good start. But we are still looking.
A Complete Unknown is currently playing in theaters.
CONTRIBUTOR
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