Bob Dylan biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ is electric in more ways than one

Mark Kennedy

“A Complete Unknown” certainly lives up to its title. You are hardly closer to understanding the soul of Bob Dylan after watching more than two hours of this moody look at America’s most enigmatic troubadour. But that’s not the point of James Mangold’s biopic: It’s not who Dylan is but what he does to us. Mangold who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks doesn’t do a traditional cradle-to-the-near-grave treatment.

He concentrates on the few crucial years between when Dylan arrived in New York in 1961 and when he blew the doors off the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 by adding a Fender Stratocaster. That means we never learn anything about Dylan before he arrives in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village with a guitar, a wool-lined bomber jacket, a fisherman’s cap, and ambition. And Dylan being Dylan, we just get scraps after that. The world spins around him, this uber-cypher of American song. Women fall in love with him, musicians seek his orbit, fans demand his autograph, and record executives fight over his signature. The Cuban Missile Crisis melds into the Kennedy assassination and the March on Washington. What does Dylan make of all this? The answer is blowing in the wind. Any sane actor would run away from this assignment. Not Timothée Chalamet, and “A Complete Unknown” is his most ambitious work to date, asking him not only to play insecure-within-a-sneer but also to play and sing 40 songs in Dylan’s unmistakable growl, complete with blustery harmonica.

Daniel Craig has been called brave for his role this awards season in “Queer.” Try playing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in front of a crowd. The last big non-documentary attempt to understand Dylan was Todd Haynes’ “ I ’ m N o t There,” which split the assignment among seven actors. Chalamet does it all, moving from callow, fresh-faced songsmith to arrogant, selfish New Yorker to jaded, staggering pop star to Angry Young Man. to trying to find out who Dylan is.