A Complete Unknown: Review. By Nick Boyd.

“A Complete Unknown,” a four-year look into Bob Dylan, is a revealing portrait of a musician who marched to the beat of a different drum.  Timothée Chalamet plays and sings as Dylan in a powerfully strong performance, while Edward Norton plays Dylan’s friend, and fellow folk musician Pete Seeger, also in a standout performance.  The two of them meet in 1961 when a young Dylan from Minnesota is visiting his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in a hospital.  (Guthrie’s reason for the hospitalization was not explained in the film.)  Seeger and his wife decide to let Dylan stay with them and find themselves impressed by his creative songwriting.

One day he meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) in Greenwich Village, and they start dating, with him eventually moving into her place.  The two of them share similar progressive ideals, but clash because the more Dylan achieves fame, the more she realizes she knows so little about the enigmatic elusive songwriter and their relationship suffers for it. 

While Russo is away on a trip he meets Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) while she is performing.  Baez, while intrigued by Dylan’s music, does not initially find his personality to be all that appealing.  He is more drawn to her (at least from a romance standpoint) than she is to him. Nonetheless, they do begin to collaborate on songwriting together.

The film offers a rare inside look into the music making process, letting the songs tell the story of Dylan’s life.  Dylan, as we come to learn, was not your typical music idol – uncomfortable with his growing fame (especially later in his career) and preferred to keep a low-profile often hiding behind his sunglasses.  He wanted to stay true to his identity and not conform to what others thought he should be as a songwriter and performer.  This is made abundantly clear when a restless Dylan breaks with tradition in a controversial performance at a folk music concert with nationwide reverberations.   

The movie takes place during the tumultuous and historically significant 1960s, as we see social protests and breaking news footage of the period.  Hence, when Dylan releases the song “The Times They Are a-Changin,” it is apropos for that period, showing the cultural influence of folk music.

Chalamet, exuding unconventional charisma, draws us into a personality that was certainly hard to define.  Both Fanning and Barbaro as the love interests complement Chalamet well, especially in the case of Barbaro. The scenes showing them singing together are highlights of the film.  The jealousies that both women come to have of each other is also palpably conveyed, most notably when they see each other in person. 

The picture, with its protagonist who did not want to fit the typical music star image, carries us along on a journey of ups and downs, always emphasizing the power of music.  

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