A Complete Unknown (2024)

Excellent - A Complete Unknown review by GI

To yearn for the historic moments in music history is arguably a symptom of getting older and looking at the past through rose tinted spectacles. This film will appeal hugely to fans and anyone who lived through or at least near to the events that are here portrayed, whether the appeal will find a younger audience we'll have to see. I suspect though that the electric performance of Timothée Chalamet's as Bob Dylan seals this as a very entertaining, interesting and absorbing music biopic. It charts the early rise of Dylan as he arrives in New York in 1961 as an unknown and under the guidance of veteran folk singer Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) his songwriting and unique singing voice soon finds a big audience and music industry interest. In fact the film skirts quite quickly through anonymity to fame via Dylan's relationships with early girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning) and then already famous singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). Chalamet plays Dylan with a vague sinister, seductive, often funny whilst with a smirking and/or scowling persona. As Baez says in the film "You're kind of an asshole Bob" and that's often how this complex character comes across. The narrative climaxes with the infamous Newport Folk Festival performance of 1965 when Dylan played a short electric set to the consternation of the folk music nerds although it does play a little loose with real events. But this is not a documentary and this is a rather good biopic of a singer who is very difficult to nail down and therefore to portray on screen. In this film it surpasses itself in that regard. This is also unusual in that this isn't a standard rise and fall story, it's all rise here, really of a music messiah and the christian references are clear to be seen here. But this is Chalamet's film, an assured, complex and damn good performance and his singing is very, very good.