A Complete Unknown (2024)
December 26, 2024 5:52 PM - Subscribe

A 20-year-old Bob Dylan comes to New York, meets interesting people, starts his career, is a jerk, writes good songs, has to decide if he's going to stick with the traditional folk music or play an electric guitar at a big folk festival, gets advice from Johnny Cash, smokes a lot of cigarettes, rides his motorcycle, looks cool.
posted by The corpse in the library (30 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wouldn't say it's a deep movie, but everyone is pretty to look at, and the costumes and sets are great. I appreciate that Chalamet for the most part didn't do a Dylan impersonation. I know his music from this era well and enjoyed the covers; the hardcore Baez fan I saw it was with was less pleased with the casting and performing for that character. I recommend seeing it in a theater, not at home, if you're like me and want to see all the coffee cups and restaurant signs. and for the sound.

Bechedel Test passed: ha ha ha ha ha no.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:56 PM on December 26, 2024 [9 favorites]


I wouldn't say it's a deep movie,

Completely agree. While we all enjoyed it well enough, I would have liked at least some discussion with his fellow songwriters about the process. What did Joan say back when he dissed her songs? Why did Johnny Cash think Bobby should go back onstage? Dylan was constantly seen with a guitar and notebook and inspirational items but never any discussion of why some events and people inspired him while others didn't. There are a few lines that seem like they might go there but they never did IMO. Maybe I want too much detail but without the detail, it verged awfully close to just being a series of songs.
posted by beaning at 7:00 PM on December 26, 2024 [4 favorites]


The set design and clothing for NYC in the 60s was great tho.
posted by beaning at 7:01 PM on December 26, 2024 [1 favorite]


I really liked it! I am confused by the reviews that mention that the movie doesn’t help explain Dylan as a person or an artist. That seems absurd to me. The man is an enigma, has always done his best to contradict himself and resist classification. That the movie embraces his contrarian personality and aversion to revealing himself beyond his music made it seem more authentic to me. I think they did a great job of showing the people, places and events that were part of his world when he was creating some of the greatest American songs ever written. Also - I liked the actor playing Joan Baez, I thought Ed Norton was perfect as Pete Seeger, and I had no idea Alan Lomax was such a bastard. Timothy Chalamet is going to be nominated for an Oscar and he deserves it.
posted by pjsky at 7:29 PM on December 26, 2024 [6 favorites]


Yeah, the Pete Seeger was great. He had his speaking style down pat. (My very first memory is at a Pete Seeger concert, with him singing “It’s a small world after all.”)
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:43 PM on December 26, 2024 [3 favorites]


Is it true that the shout of “Judas” has shifted location?
posted by gnuhavenpier at 11:30 PM on December 26, 2024


Pretty sure Dylan was called Judas while on tour in England the following year. Manchester 1966.
posted by pjsky at 8:21 AM on December 27, 2024 [3 favorites]


I just heard a rumour that it had been shifted to the Newport festival. Glad to hear it if that’s not true
posted by gnuhavenpier at 1:49 PM on December 27, 2024


The film has someone at a folk fest shouting Judas at him and the film does not go to England.
posted by beaning at 3:21 PM on December 27, 2024


According to this article in Entertainment Weekly, they mashed up the England and Newport concerts for the movie.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:36 PM on December 27, 2024


Chalamet truly embodies Dylan IMO; his performance was amazing.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:42 AM on December 29, 2024


Overall liked it. Chalamet was great. Edward Norton probably surprised me the most at how good he was in that role. I think the supporting cast/roles felt more like real people than Chalamet's Dylan, which maybe was somewhat the intention, but it missed a little bit for me (he still did a great job).

I found it interesting how much focus the movie, in terms of how often they're there and how carefully shots were composed, the background tech folks. The sound crew at concerts, the various film camera and photographers at the festivals, and the general backstage crew. I haven't seen a ton of music biopics but this feels like more than normal and much more deliberate. Some of the shots, at Newport in particular, almost felt like they had the crew as the focus of the shot and our main characters (Cash, Baez, Dylan) were in the shot but were there mostly to frame it.
posted by skynxnex at 2:44 PM on December 30, 2024 [2 favorites]




On a quick skim that looks great (and will finish reading later); I did notice what maybe seemed like even fewer women doing things than I expected but hadn't looked to see if that was "accurate" or not.
posted by skynxnex at 5:23 PM on December 30, 2024 [1 favorite]


Mod note: URL from praemunire's comment fixed.
posted by loup (staff) at 5:33 PM on December 30, 2024 [1 favorite]


> Bechedel Test passed: ha ha ha ha ha no.

I really think this is completely fine for a biopic about a man.
posted by moosetracks at 11:09 AM on January 1


How many biopics about women would lack the converse for men characters?
posted by praemunire at 1:47 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]


Hopefully, most of them.

Are you suggesting that we should make worse movies about men rather than better movies about women? Does not seem like doing the latter necessitates doing the former.
posted by moosetracks at 6:33 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]


Are you suggesting that including women talking to each other about something other than men makes movies worse?

For example: what if we’d rounded out the Baez character? Or made Toshi Seeger more historically accurate? Or included more of the important women from Newport, such as Odetta?

There were significant women in the NYC folk scene Dylan was part of. It wouldn’t have been tokenism to include them in this movie. It’s a choice the movie makers made.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:32 AM on January 2 [5 favorites]


Now that I think about it more, that’s my main problem with the movie (which I liked). There’s very little putting Dylan in context, and what there is is pretty hamfisted.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:04 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]


Merrill Markoe on Toshi Seeger, her depiction in the film, and what she actually did and was like. (Oops, I see now this is a duplicate post.)
posted by larrybob at 11:03 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]


> Are you suggesting that including women talking to each other about something other than men makes movies worse?

I am suggesting that doing this just for the sake of doing it would make the movie worse, yes. And again, I am not commenting on “movies” generally. I am commenting on biopics about an individual man, where you would expect any dialogue between two non-main characters to be related, in some way, to the main character unless it was otherwise somehow relevant to the main character’s biography but not directly about him.
posted by moosetracks at 12:04 PM on January 2 [1 favorite]


I should make it clear that I don't actually care that this particular movie doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. I brought it up because I thought it was funny how very far it was from passing, despite not being set on a WWII submarine.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:16 PM on January 2 [3 favorites]


Minnesotan here who wants to know: how much Hibbing footage?
posted by wenestvedt at 5:06 PM on January 6


Zilch.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:49 PM on January 6


I saw it last week, and as a music nerd and former big Dylan fan, the dramatic enhancing of Newport '65 and blending with the hostile UK '66 tour was annoying.

It is part of the Legend of Bob now, but people were not throwing stuff at him and thankfully they didn't have Pete attack the power/audio cables with an axe in the movie. Although the shot of him eyeing a bunch of axes leaning against a table backstage was funny. Why would there be so many axes there?

I'm glad the film didn't spend any time on childhood Bob as it is long enough already. Far too many scenes of someone witnessing him work out a new line in a song and being awestruck by his talents. Plus a crowd joining in on a brand new song they're hearing for the first time? Please.

Minor quibbles - Johnny Cash only played Newport once but appears at two in the movie. Good attention to using historical accurate microphones in concert scenes, except for Newport '63 where they showed a Sony C-37; period correct but not a mic typically used for live, outdoor events.

Anyway, seeing it inspired me to dust off my Dad's copies of the first six albums again. That young guy had some talent.
posted by Paid In Full at 7:40 AM on January 7


I saw this on Christmas. Loved hearing the song renditions and feeling vicariously caught up in the excitement of the 1960s folk scene. It didn't really work for me as a movie for the same reason biopics rarely do: it felt more like a series of vignettes from a life the audience is assumed to already know rather than a story in its own right. It also came with the extra baggage of being released years after both I'm Not There and Inside Llewyn Davis, two hard acts to follow that cover the same music scene and the same themes.

I also loved Merrill Markoe on Toshi Seeger. Thanks to everyone who's posted that link here and on the Blue. Was miffed at what seemed like a character assassination on Alan Lomax until recent conversations I've had confirmed he really was a difficult guy to get along with. I do always find these movies funnier than most people do because I am from the Alan Lomax side of this scene. I co-organized a folk festival with an unwritten policy to exclude "singer-songwriters" and then literally interned with Folkways Recordings. I laughed uncontrollably over the Archives of Folk Song scenes because I think I've had those exact conversations verbatim.

Also, Electric Dylan Controversy is one of my favorite Wikipedia article titles.
posted by capricorn at 3:53 PM on January 7


There was that scene with Dylan having a tiff with "Sylvie Russo" (the renamed Suze Rotolo), during which she complains that he doesn't want to be known; she knows nothing about his background save for the few tidbits he's told her. Honestly, I felt that about the script - we learn nothing about Dylan that we didn't already know from interviews then and now, or from his own songs or Baez's songs.

But there's that thing Roger Ebert is supposed to have said, about how sometimes it's not what a film is about; it's about how it's about it. And a lot of the performances are bang on - particularly Chalamet, who doesn't seem to perform as Bob Dylan so much as he channels him. When the trailer came out I actually didn't realize until the third time watching it that "wait....that's Timmy singing, he's not lipsyncing to Dylan." Honestly, if I hadn't been hearing so many good things about Adrian Brody in The Brutalist, I'd be predicting an Oscar Best Actor win for Chalamet.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:56 PM on January 12


Not at all surprised to hear that people like Joan Baez are minimized in the Dylan mythology, because, like, that's Bob Dylan, and he's been that way for decades.

Voice of his generation, America's second-greatest living poet, etc., etc., and I will always love his (pre-born-again) music, but, having seen Don't Look Back and Eat the Document and others, he's kind of a prick.
posted by box at 8:44 AM on January 13


In fairness, I don't think he comes out of the film well. Went with resident 15 year old and they asked as we left 'Why was he such a dick?'

Weirdly, 3 people walked out of our showing at the final Newport concert. We couldn't tell if they were folk fans staging a reenactment.
posted by hfnuala at 12:07 PM on January 26


« Older Star Wars: Skeleton Crew: You ...   |  What If...?: What If... the Em... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster