Patrick Mulcahy on early Dylan on screen
Lately filmmakers – and their subjects – have been messing with the format of the traditional music biography. Let’s tell my story using Lego bricks (Piece by Piece) or represent myself as a performing humanoid chimpanzee (Better Man). The critics applaud. Audiences not so much. What filmmakers Morgan Neville and Michael Gracey have done with the stories of Pharrell Williams and Robbie Williams (no relation) is to foreground the filter between the audience and the subject. When we watch an actor playing a famous person, we generally forget the interpreter on screen and lose ourselves in the performance, which is a pleasure in itself. When a filmmaker produces a gimmick, we say: “so Robbie Williams imagines that he was a monkey performing for an organ grinder. Didn’t he sign up for that?” Our sympathy – and interest – wanes.
Unlike Pharrell and Robbie, I have no doubt that Bob Dylan doesn’t give two figs about how he was portrayed in the film, A Complete Unknown, just as long as the filmmakers James Mangold (co-writer, director) and Jay Cocks (co-writer) didn’t make stuff up. There is a wealth of third person testimony to draw from for this Disneyfied account of Bob’s early rise, from his pilgrimage to the hospital bed of Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in 1961 to his literally electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Aside from Woody Guthrie, he doesn’t write songs about the individuals he cares about. He puts himself at a distance. He allows people to watch him but not know him, spinning a yarn about learning his craft from a travelling circus troupe. These days, we might clinically diagnose him with autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the latter on account of his restlessness. He’s defensive and vulnerable, for sure, though in the film, his talent rather than vulnerability is the draw. In one scene, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) is woken up by him composing a song on her guitar. She shows him the door.
Timothée Chalamet is perfectly cast as Dylan. Chalamet lacks a strong persona, handsome but unsure, not a natural leader. He doesn’t so much command an audience as show us a man figuring stuff out with a bluff assurance and a modest singing voice (see also Wonka). He has an appealing immaturity, nervously delighted by the effect he produces, rather than cocky and confident. There’s not a hint of arrogance, which is perfectly in tune with Bob’s decision to record a series of covers for his first album and to allow Joan Baez to perform his material.
Chalamet’s stray puppy Dylan is adopted by folk banjoist and promoter Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, with a hint of the late David Lynch’s gee-whiz folksiness). Seeger gives him a place to stay and shows him a stage to perform on in New York City, where he immediately catches the eye of record producers and Baez herself, the main draw. An appearance at a festival leads Dylan to meet Sylvie (Elle Fanning, playing a fictionalised version of Susan Rotolo), who gives him the key to her apartment while she works overseas.
There’s the obligatory trip to a record store in which Dylan discovers that his own record isn’t selling whilst Baez’s requires re-ordering. His second album, “The Freewheelin” featuring original songs establishes him. Dylan’s relationship with Baez fizzles out but he shuttles between Joan and Sylvie regardless until both finally reject him.
In a film that “prints the legend”, there are some enjoyable set pieces. Whilst New York panics from the threat of nuclear war, Bob indifferently heads to a folk club and performs his music; surprisingly, it’s pretty full. He turns up late for a recording of Pete Seeger’s TV show and shares a drink during the recording with performer Brownie McGhee (Joshua Henry). Pete’s eyes signal his horror; that’s not the rainbow he’s talking about. Dylan glances at a pop whistle at a street stall and integrates it into his act. At a party filled with music executives, he is reluctant to perform and disappears quickly. He might turn up late for meetings, but his lyrics impress Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) – the subject of Mangold’s Oscar winning biopic Walk the Line – who writes him a fan letter.
The film’s finale is the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Rumours that Dylan will perform with an electric guitar fill the organizers with horror. The climactic set piece is staged for humour: how can Pete Seeger and others stop this monstrosity? We watch it knowing musical history is being made.
As a portrait of a musical artist, A Complete Unknown, is simultaneously awful and exhilarating. It’s awfully exhilarating. You enjoy the songs – truncated as they are. Chalamet’s version of a male chauvinist pig is almost inoffensive, with many of the edges shaved off. The film acknowledges the deaths of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King but takes the protest out of protest songs. Social discord is barely acknowledged. Folk music is something sweet people do. Sexual proclivity is fully clothed. There aren’t any cockroaches in the sink.
“A Complete Unknown” is on release