A Complete Unknown” Review: Timothée Chalamet Shines in James Mangold’s Captivating Portrait of Bob Dylan

James Mangold serves up another captivatingly complex portrait of the intersection of fame and artistry in A Complete Unknown, starring one of the world’s biggest working actors Timothee Chalamet. Mangold is inarguably one of the more fascinating directors working in Hollywood and places a clear importance on ingenuity when depicting the inner conflict we each experience at one point or another: do we please others or please ourselves?

With classics like Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted under his belt, along with recent box office hits like Logan and Ford v Ferrari, Mangold has an impressively diverse portfolio stacked with films unapologetic in their exploration of the human experience. Bob Dylan, played valiantly by Chalamet, is a walking enigma armed with sunglasses and a six string. As his on and off again lover Sylvie, played by Elle Fanning, points out, Bob has thousands of people to talk to should he ever find himself feeling lonely. However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Despite how many people know his name or his music, it seems nobody truly knows who he is beyond his harmonica and chords. People seem to fall in love with him without truly knowing him. People expect things from him without ever having met him. Record labels want him to keep playing in a box he’s desperate to break free from.

Mangold proposes an interesting question in an age of modern celebrity. Audiences—or fandoms, as they’re known now—have a sense of entitlement when it comes to artists and their art. Fans believe they have a right to their favourite musicians’ music; they believe they have a say in what they should do, how they should play, who they should be. But, as the film points out, these are often the fuel and mechanics of commerce—not artistry. True artistry comes from identity, which is something that blossoms and changes in every person. Even in mythic personas like Bob Dylan. Though, with 60’s New York as the backdrop, it’s clear that society isn’t quite ready for change. Events like Kennedy’s assassination, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fight for equal rights all add to the culture of Dylan’s music, of the world at this time, and incite the identity of his music. It seems these times are a changing.

Chalamet commits to this performance more than any other in his career thus far. He walks and talks like Dylan, but there’s a clear understanding between Chalamet and the spirits of the singer that animates Chalamet. There’s a piece of the star within the actor, living there, and it makes us wonder how much of this singer Chalamet took along with him after Mangold shouted cut that final time.

This film is a colourful love letter to Dylan’s discography. Its runtime is full of his songs and musical exploration; it depicts his experimental approach to new sounds and the relationship he has with songwriting. Edward Norton stars as Dylan’s mentor Pete Seeger, delivering an earnest performance as one of the many who try to remind Dylan who he used to be. But that isn’t who he wants to be now, and this realization is one of the many heartbreaks of this film. Chapters end and people grow; sometimes apart from each other.

Mangold and Cocks craft a story that humanizes the icon by showing the tremendous nuance of his identity as a person and how that directly relates to his identity as an artist. He’s treated like a commodity and though he aims to break outside the mold that made him, finds himself meeting resistance every step of the way. In the final act, he considers playing within the lines until musical icon Johnny Cash (played by Boyd Holbrook) persuades him not to. And due to this single choice, we were given some of the most influential music of the time. This film allows us to take a peek behind the celebrity and glamour and see that Bob Dylan was a musician who seemed to desire a life without fame and without boundaries. He wanted to be an singer and a songwriter, not a star. He wanted to remain a complete unknown, but became one of the tallest pillars of the music industry.

As a fan of the icon, A Complete Unknown is a musical masterpiece worth seeing in theatres! See it everywhere this Christmas.

Watch the trailer for A Complete Unknown below

Searchlight Pictures releases A Complete Unknown in theatres December 25th, 2024 

[Review by guest blogger Jurgen Sosa]