A Complete Unknown movie review: Timothee Chalamet is masterful in Bob Dylan biopic

In retrospect, it must be so strange that such a massive fuss was made over Bob Dylan whipping out an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

So much consternation over a choice that reflects one artist’s musical evolution as he embraced change in a decade that was rife with constant movement. But it was a huge moment that was, depending on who you ask, a deep betrayal or a transformative cultural revolution.

A Complete Unknown is drawn from Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric!, and follows the singer-songwriter’s journey from obscurity to global fame.

Directed by James Mangold, it’s a straightforward biopic that will satisfy both the Dylan and Timothee Chalamet fans, two generations that don’t always see eye-to-eye.

Chalamet, a prodigious young talent who has rarely stepped wrong, spent years learning the guitar and harmonica, and to sing as Dylan. It’s a fully committed performance that manages to capture the interiority of Dylan – his talent, his prickliness, his distance from people, and his quiet ambition.

It’s masterful. He is that good.

The film opens with Bob arriving in New York City with a bag, a guitar and music running through his head. His pilgrimage is to visit Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), already hospitalised for Huntington’s.

From the moment Bob starts strumming his guitar, Woody and his friend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) are mesmerised. Who is this kid? Where did he come from?

Pete takes him in and Bob starts to make an impression throughout Greenwich Village’s folk music scene. At one performance, Pete introduces him to an audience that includes Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and some record executives. Everyone is captivated.

He also meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a fictionalised version of Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend around this time.

Bob’s obvious gifts make him a star, holding the attention of anyone who hears him sing, which starts to pull him in different directions and into the arms of various people who want something different from him.

To Joan, he’s a collaborator and sometime-lover and sometime-rival. To the diehards of the folk scene, he’s a symbol of their relevance and power in the wider culture, and to Sylvie, he’s the guy she can’t quit even though he’s not a particularly faithful partner.

Pete has fidelity to folk but he genuinely cares for Bob – there’s a push-and-pull there that makes this one of the most intriguing aspects of the film.

A Complete Unknown is unequivocal about Dylan’s impact and entrancing stage presence, but its onscreen Bob is a fully realised person with flaws. He’s not perfect, he can be rude, he can be dismissive and he can be a crap friend and lover. He’s not a figure, he’s a person.

Mangold and co-screenwriter Jay Cocks’ choice to be in the perspective of the people around him as well as Bob gives him that shading, and grounds the story in his community.

Where A Complete Unknown comes up short is that it doesn’t tie Dylan’s story into the context of 1960s America and his influence on the wider culture beyond the folk music scene of New York City. For someone who came to define a generation, the film feels too contained.

There’s also a jump before the final act which feels as if it’s missing one or two scenes to connect the pretty famous Bob with the super-famous Bob and why that change prompted his musical direction. It’s a tad abrupt.

Overall, A Complete Unknown is an accomplished, largely rewarding biopic that effectively capitalises on genre tropes, buoyed by fantastic performances especially from Chalamet and Barbaro, and deploys Dylan’s music at exactly the correct moments.

Rating: 3.5/5

A Complete Unknown is in cinemas on January 23