Review: A Complete Unknown

Director:  James Mangold

Stars:  Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro, Elle Fanning

There’s a scene in A Complete Unknown that’s promoted heavily in its trailer which features Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) sparring lightly in a domestic setting because the former has described the latter’s songs as “like an oil painting at the dentist’s office”. That is to say bland. That is to say inoffensive. That is to say unchallenging, forgettable, anaemic. It’s a blithely hurtful comment from the typically arrogant Dylan, portrayed throughout A Complete Unknown as a bolshy little twerp. It’s also the fairest condemnation of James Mangold’s film I could imagine. A poetic barb that sums up its every move and indulgence. Oscar season needs it’s inexplicable turd. That’s Emilia Pérez this year. But it also needs a polished yet thunderously dull biopic. Enter Mangold.

The prestige music drama has swiftly become the go-to subgenre for studios and producers eyeing a bit of awards glory, hopefully a hit soundtrack album, some good PR on a press tour, etc, etc. The movies themselves become almost immaterial. The product around which you can package what you really want. And most of them are – and this is a sweeping generalisation, I’ll grant you – horseshit. In recent years the best you can hope for is kinda okay (Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis), most aren’t watchable (Stardust, Black to Black*, Bohemian Rhapsody of course).

It’s no coincidence that the best one featured in that brief argument is the only one worth buttoning with a director’s name. When dealing with legends and iconoclasts, you need some personality yourself. Something brought to the table. Unfortunately for Bob Dylan and for A Complete Unknown, we get James Mangold, perhaps current Hollywood’s most meat-and-potatoes, boilerplate journeyman. 

What’s been fashioned here covers Dylan’s rise to prominence from ’61 to ’65, discovered and issued through the gates of corporate America’s music industry by benevolent folk paragon Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). Where Dylan’s come from is made immaterial. What he wants he doesn’t even know. As portrayed by Chalamet, he’s a sort of music machine, rigidly regurgitating reedy, monotonous singalong ditties whenever a microphone is wheeled in front of him (a process that looks sort of pained). He has a flinty yet asexual relationship with aforementioned legend Joan Baez. He has on-and-off girlfriend Sylvie Russo, played by Elle Fanning, rendered so rote and background that she isn’t introduced by name for several scenes. He writes songs and he records songs. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

A Complete Unknown becomes interminable after about an hour and a half, but – rather like Emilia Pérez, actually – this is where it throws in some semblance of dramatic impulse to eke another 50 minutes out of us. Dylan starts flexing in the studio, makes some buddies, corrals a band together and, most controversially of all, plugs some stuff in. The movie tethers itself to some neutered suspense over whether or not he’ll play electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Rendered a little spuriously as an artist vs The Man battle, it feels like a laborious elaboration to give Mangold’s film even a dash of direction. That Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks go on to mangle the history a little only dismantles the point of A Complete Unknown further.

If this is for Dylan die-hards and MOJO subscribers, such blatant apocrypha will only prove niggling and annoying. If this is to court the uninitiated, a quick Google will reveal that the movie has jumbled events out of dramatic license, thus casting doubt over the rest. I’m no aficionado when it comes to Dylan, but A Complete Unknown reeks of inaccuracy and amalgamation in an effort to stem an already bloated running time. That Mangold’s film goes some way to giving credit for all of this to Johnny Cash is, at least, wryly funny. 

As with most efforts like this that just whizz down the Wikipedia entry, there are flavours of historical moments (the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK’s assassination, the civil rights movement) happening in the background, but little that’s substantive. As with Dylan and those who pepper his surroundings we’re fed morsels, but nothing filling. This is particularly true when it comes to the women in his life. It’s remarkable that Barbaro manages to make as much of a mark on the film as she does. This is largely thanks to her magnetism when channeling Baez the performer. But it’s damning when the most animated one here is Fanning, and all she gets to do is moon at Chalamet from backstage. 

For all that the Dylan here rallies against genres and pigeonholing, Mangold has coloured strictly and dutifully within the lines. Far from awful, A Complete Unknown is simply bog-standard. Exactly the movie you expect it to be, and then about 20 minutes longer. Chalamet does a fine enough impersonation, but it’s a little strained and not his best work. Listening to his effortful Dylan renditions is as gratifying as time spent with any tribute act. Ultimately, you’ll go home and put the real thing on instead because its more giving, more authentic, more… electric. The rest is just pub chat with music bores. The flood of nominations and statuettes is inevitable.

*an admission, even I haven’t rallied the courage for Back to Black yet. Sometimes you need to prioritise self-care.