Outposter Mhatt returns with another Oscar Watcher, giving you all you need to know if any of this year’s crop of awards bait are worthy of your viewing time,. He really is too good to you all. This time – A Complete Unknown.
A Complete Unknown
A Complete Unknown is directed by James Mangold, written by James Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Elijah Wald. It stars Timothée Chalamet, Ed Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Scoot McNairy, and Dan Folger.
Bob Dylan arrives in the happening music scene of New York City, NY, in the decade of all decades that was the 1960s and establishes himself as a major influence on music history.
New York City, 1961. The current voice of the era is folk singin’, banjo-pickin’ Pete Seeger (Norton), who uses his celebrity folk status to promote and push for social progress. Pete makes regular visits to a hospitalized Woody Guthrie (McNairy) where he meets 20-year-old Bobby Dylan showing up, guitar in hand, to meet his hero.
Bob’s undeniable musical gifts earn Seeger as a mentor and guide through the music scene along the same path as established folk star Joan Baez (Barbaro).
According to Bob, he only aspires to be “a musician who wants to eat,” but his prolific songwriting shines like a beacon to the souls of the embattled masses ever longing for a leader. As he begins selling albums, filling concert halls, and meeting a new generation of musicians, his desire to evolve past the folk form generates waves of animosity and concern among those who feel a level of ownership over his image.
The fear is the new electric sound will dilute the popular messages of love, peace, and justice in the name of something as gimmicky and inauthentic. The conflict culminates at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob’s official pivot to an electric sound is taken as a betrayal of the folk scene that nurtured him.
Bob leaves as Bob comes, a musician but a mystery, loyal to his music above all else.
Overall, A Complete Unknown is a pretty limp look at Bob Dylan as both an artist and a human. Nothing was really narratively accomplished here, and whatever your opinion of Dylan was coming into this movie is likely to be unchanged.
Mov
Meeting him on the cusp of celebrity keeps him just out of reach of any deep insight, and despite living in a tumultuous social era, we never get his take on things; he’s talented and not modest and skates along, not letting anyone’s expectations, fan or producer alike, pigeonhole him.
There is an emotional core to this movie; it’s supposed to be his off-and-on relationship with Sylvie Russo (Fanning), but it’s really between Bob and Pete, whose heart we slowly watch break as his prodigy moves further and further out from under his wing.
Joan: “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”
Bob: “Yeah, I guess.”
This should have been highlighted on the posters in the name of honest advertising as it neatly sums this portrayal up. Sure, art tends to be greater than the artist, but this attempt to mythologize Bob Dylan only succeeds in portraying him as a man who doesn’t really live up to his own legacy.
What You Should or Shouldn’t Watch It For?
*Going forward please read these as predictions and not a condonation of deservedness.
As the leads purportedly did all their own singing, along with the consistent buzz, nominations to look for include nods in the Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress categories for Chalamet, Norton, and Barbaro.
Best Sound
Best Production Design
Only recommended viewing for Chalamet fans, Dylan fans, celebrity biopic lovers, and any experts on the New York music scene around this time who are able to fill in the gaping historical gaps.