“A Complete Unknown” – Yet Another Side of Bob Dylan Emerges in New Film
How many roads must a man walk down before his life gets turned into a deluge of movies and TV series? In an ideal world, every simple twist of Bob Dylan’s momentous life would have yielded some sort of screen adaptation by now, rendering Star Wars a cottage industry by comparison.
It’s been slow going as Dylan eyes his 85th year, though. Aside from the usual documentaries, I can count the projects on Joan Baez’s middle finger (see below, ahem). That would be Todd Haynes’ intriguing 2007 ensemble piece I’m Not There, which starred not one but six Dylans, including Cate Blanchett who comes a cropper on a motorcycle. I’m holding out for a “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” miniseries or a “Baby Bob” Saturday morning cartoon.
But wait! A Festivus miracle. We are blessed with an officially sanctioned conventional biopic revolving around Bob’s incredibly fertile early days in New York City. A Complete Unknown is a fun trip back to a revolutionary time in pop culture when Bob became the wunderkind of the folk community in 1961 and then smashed their eardrums with his electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
If that seems a little reductive, the movie also includes pilgrimages to Bob’s ailing hero Woody Guthrie, and booty calls to his tearful girlfriends Sylvie Russo (real name Suze Rotolo) and the aforementioned Baez. Along the way he conjures up some important words on his typewriter. There’s something for everyone. Both hilarious and provocative, it’s more compelling than his last few albums. A Complete Unknown opens Christmas Day in North America.
Bob is played by someone who is a complete unknown in my universe, but apparently quite well known by everyone else on the planet. Timothée Chalamet slips on the corduroy Huck Finn cap and instantly transforms into a lovable Upper Midwestern ragamuffin. It’s not an act. He really is Bob. He sings, strums, walks and talks just like a woman Bob. True to life, he doesn’t really offer much conversation. There are no great monologues, just a lot of witty asides, some self-pitying complaints and searing putdowns. To Joan: “Your songs are like an oil painting at a dentist’s office.”
The ladies love laconic Bob regardless, and the Cuban missile crisis is a great opportunity for him to bag Baez. The so-called “queen of the folksingers” is worried she might wake up the next day with ashes in her mouth, to paraphrase JFK, and Bob’s girlfriend is out of the country. So that’s how Joan ends up in Sylvie/Suze’s apartment, perfectly toned in blue panties and grungy white t-shirt. It’s blatant folk porn. Monica Barbaro, the actress, looks nothing like Joan, “maybe a little too pretty,” as his character says to hers at their first meeting. Joan’s exquisite too, but in a different way. I met her once, and she smelled fantastic, as I’m sure Monica does.
Sylvie/Suze, immortalised arm in arm with the Bard on the cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, is none the wiser after returning from her foreign sabbatical, simply expressing surprise that Bob has taught himself to make coffee. The name change to Sylvie, apparently at Dylan’s behest, irks me, which is why I use both names. If you didn’t know better — as was the case when I watched it — you might think the characters were saying “Suze” but in a weird East Coast drawl, Sulzee.
What’s weirder is that I once saw Elle Fanning, the actress playing Suze/Sylvie, in line at my local post office near Universal Pictures in the early years of the century. She must have been five or six and stared at me with her piercing blue (IIRC) eyes as her mother completed her transaction at the counter which Elle barely reached. And now she’s banging Bob Dylan and educating him about social issues.
Bob’s most interesting relationship, however, is with Pete Seeger. The folk icon barely gets a mention in Dylan’s 2004 memoir, but fairly dominates the first twenty minutes of the 141-minute film and all the subsequent scenes in which he appears. As played by Edward Norton, Pete is a mentor, advocate and proud father figure. But he’s also a bit of a nudnik, an old codger in his early 40s trying to uphold the folk tradition. The times are indeed changing, however, and he knows it.
Pete gamely tries to act as a bridge between Bob and the establishment — dismissed by Bob as the “posse of purity.” As Bob’s stock rises, so does Pete’s fall. Even the decrepit Woody Guthrie (tenderly played by Scoot McNairy) switches to Team Bob. Pete is reduced to stalking Bob like a bad smell. These random encounters are pretty funny, culminating in Pete’s bonkers 7 a.m. lecture to Bob and his associates about “teaspoons for justice and teaspoons for peace and teaspoons for love.” Later that day there’s not much folkie love in the Newport air as Bob disturbs the earth’s rotation by going electric.
But there’s still respect between Bob and Pete, as depicted in the wordless scene early the next day when Bob swings by the scene of the crime to see Pete packing up all the folding chairs. Bob then rides off into the sunrise on his aptly chosen Triumph motorbike. It’s a new morning for him, while Pete has to clean up the mess.
The film is inspired by the Elijah Wald book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties, with the script credited to director James Mangold (Walk the Line) and former Time magazine scribe and Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks. They have taken plenty of creative liberties as one might expect. Rolling Stone magazine pointed out 27 historical discrepancies, and even Norton has stated that Dylan himself added a totally inaccurate scene just to mess with people. Quite frankly, I doubt most of the stuff I’ve mentioned above actually happened.
Interestingly, a wee mistake in Wald’s book — he points it out in an online erratum — has been faithfully reproduced in the film. Bob and Suze/Sylvie are shown watching Walter Cronkite announce the death of JFK when in fact they watched Lee Harvey Oswald get shot a few days later.
With Dylan, the whole truth really isn’t that important. I don’t mind if Johnny Cash magically shows up at Newport ’65 as Dylan’s No. 1 fan. But did Cash really call his hero “B.D.,” roll his eyes while mentioning Mother Maybelle, and urge Dylan to “Go get ’em, killer” as he handed him a guitar? Although Cash was a gaunt junkie at that point, the character is played a little too broadly by Boyd Holbrook. Similarly, I have to wonder if the film’s (highly unlikely) villain, esteemed folklorist Alan Lomax (played by Norbert Leo Butz), would have said anything close to, “Listen Bob, you don’t have to compete with the Beatles, OK? You are better than that shit.”
Obviously you can’t squeeze everyone who ever crossed paths with Dylan into the movie. Important folks like his manager, Albert Grossman, get a few lighthearted lines while folkie Dave Van Ronk is seen and heard but not identified. My only concern would be the complete omission of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, whose records and singing style heavily influenced Dylan and earned Jack a spot on his Rolling Thunder tour in the ’70s and some generous mentions in his memoir. Jack, now 93, remains fond of the young man. (I interviewed Jack and his daughter, Aiyana, in 2000 for an affectionate, if occasionally adversarial, documentary she made about her dad, The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack.)
Even if purists get tangled up over the script or casting, they would be hard pressed to find fault with the music. Everyone does their own singing and playing, even Monica Barbaro who apparently didn’t sing or play before and now appears to be a gifted soprano. Some 13 coaches and teachers are listed in the credits, supervised by executive music producer Nick Baxter. I was intrigued by the chap who turned Edward Norton into an old-school picker, Adam Tressler, a freelance guitarist who likes to write songs about obscure presidents. Here he is playing a banjo version of Tool’s “Sober.”
But I digress. The musical highlight is undoubtedly the rendition of the “new” song “The Times They are a-Changin’” at the 1964 edition of Newport. Bob is now unquestionably the star of the proceedings, and the anthem sends an electric shock through the crowd. Each line gets a loud cheer and they sing along with the title like it’s a battle cry. Pete Seeger is overcome at the end, looks up to the heavens and exhales. His dream of folk music reaching everyone is thisclose to fruition. You cannot watch this performance and not get swept up in the moment. But Suze/Sylvie is crying when the camera turns to her as Bob sings, “The present now will later be past.” Does this apply to her too? At least she knows the time. The folkies may be deluding themselves.
With this new film, Dylan now bridges the generations more successfully than Pete Seeger did. The sweet pretty things will line up to see their young hero in anything (just as Dylan apparently does with Gregory Peck movies). As for the skeptical codgers, don’t think twice, it’s all right.
NOTE: If you liked this article, consider my gossipy rock bio Strange Days: The Adventures of a Grumpy Rock ‘n’ Roll Journalist in Los Angeles, available here
Copyright © 2024 by Dean Goodman. PLEASE DO NOT CUT AND PASTE THE WHOLE THING