A Complete Unknown is arguably the best feature ever made about a sixties music icon. The film has earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture, plus for an unrecognizable Timothée Chalamet’s compelling portrait of Bob Dylan and Ed Norton’s depiction of Pete Seeger, with much of the cast doing their own singing. James Mangold’s film is in the same artistic league as Arthur Penn’s 1969 Arlo Guthrie biopic Alice’s Restaurant and Hal Ashby’s 1976 Bound for Glory, about Depression-era Dustbowl ballad composer Woody Guthrie.
Unknown opens in 1961 with nineteen-year-old Dylan hitchhiking from Minnesota to Manhattan to discover Greenwich Village’s folk music scene—and to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie.
Dylan learns Guthrie (Scott McNairy) is in the hospital, suffering from Huntington’s disease, and goes to New Jersey where he finds Guthrie and Seeger. The two ask the guitar-slinging “Bobby” to play, and he impresses both of them with a rendition of Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty.” Mostly incapacitated by the disease, Woody bangs on a bedside chest.
Seeger takes Dylan under his wing, driving him to his home; en route, the two disagree over Little Richard’s hit playing on the car radio, cleverly foreshadowing a generational clash that is to come. But at Seeger’s home, a log cabin in the woods, where he lives with his wife Toshi (Eriko Hatsune) and their children, Seeger grooms Dylan to become heir apparent of the “throne” of folk music, with its tradition as the authentic voice of working people.
Thus “anointed,” Dylan makes the rounds wherever folk music is played. At Riverside Church, he meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning portrays a fictionalized version of Suze Rotolo, who would later be pictured next to Dylan on the cover of his 1963 album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.) Russo, an aspiring artist and student activist, introduces Dylan to the countercultural scene of Greenwich Village in New York City, and to leftwing politics. A member of the Congress of Racial Equality, Russo takes him to his first Civil Rights demonstration.
Suze Rotolo was a major political influence on the young Dylan. Onscreen he is briefly glimpsed performing at the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice. A month earlier Dylan had also played at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, although Unknown omits this, along with the fact that the real-life Rotolo was also a “Red Diaper Baby,” the daughter of Communists.
In the film, Dylan, still completely unknown, moves into Russo’s apartment in the Village, and becomes a fixture performing at cafes in the bohemian enclave, developing a following, and landing a recording deal with Columbia Records. The New York Times dubs him “a cross between a choir boy and beatnik.” He also meets the already-famous Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). While his girlfriend (Russo) is studying abroad, Dylan cheats on her with Baez in Russo’s own apartment, starting an affair that has been speculated about for decades.
Despite this, Dylan is repeatedly shown pursuing his true love: songwriting. In Unknown Dylan and Baez both seem to be more musically than physically attracted to one another, using each other to advance their careers. By the time the Minnesotan arrived in Manhattan, Baez was established in the folk world. When Dylan privately sings the as-yet unrecorded “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Baez asks Dylan to let her publicly perform and release what she realizes will become a classic.
After the two break up, still contracted to perform together, they musically spar during live shows, including a droll scene where their “It Ain’t Me Babe” duet drips with sarcasm, singing ironically, “I’m not the one you’re lookin’ for, babe.”
Dylan’s star is on the rise; overseen by a proud Seeger, Dylan is the toast of the folk universe, including ethnomusicologist and archivist Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz). In 1963 and 1964, Bob is a hit at the Newport Folk Festival, but the film shows how his loss of privacy takes its toll on Dylan, who confesses to Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) that he’s being “pulverized” by fame.
As groups like The Beatles stormed the music industry, enticing youth now beyond the older generation’s command. With the rollicking sound of the July 1965 single, “Like a Rolling Stone,” enlivened by the Hammond B2 organ of Al Kooper (Charlie Tahan), it seemed Dylan was musically moving in that direction as well. Led by Lomax and Seeger, keeper of folk’s flame, the anxious Old Guard tries to prevent Dylan’s “backslide” towards rock, which they view as a betrayal of the folk tradition. This leads to the film’s final showdown, as Dylan takes the stage at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, wielding—gasp!—an electric guitar and triggering music’s biggest contretemps since, Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 The Rite of Spring —according to legend—sparked a riot at its premiere in Paris.
What makes Dylan tick? Early in Unknown, Russo accidentally learns Dylan’s last name is really “Zimmerman,” indicating he has been hiding his Jewish heritage. Russo reproaches him for not revealing the truth about his Minnesota upbringing. Does Dylan’s evolution from acoustic to amplified music symbolize America’s generation gap, New Left versus Old Left? Or was it just the quirks of a genius, pursuing his personal artistic vision?
Who can explain Dylan’s raison d’être? The biopic’s end credits sum it up: As “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” plays in the background, text onscreen states that Dylan was the only songwriter to ever win a Nobel Prize in literature—but he didn’t attend the awards ceremony. Bob Dylan’s rhyme and reason may remain completely unknown.
A Complete Unknown opens nationwide December 25.