Film: “A Complete Unknown” starring Timothee Chalomet as Bob Dylan

A guy named Bobby walks into a NJ hospital room where another guy named Woody lays dying and is unable to speak. Bobby is carrying a guitar case. A third fellow named Pete asks Bobby to play something and he does.

This happens early on in James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” and soon “Pete” or Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and “Woody”or Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy) are gazing upon “Bobby” or Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalomet) as if he is a combination of Jesus in the temple and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

From this moment forward, Chalomet becomes the center of this very enjoyable biopic, which chronicles Dylan’s rise (1961-65) from shy Midwestern folkie to electric rock star.

As great actors do, Chalomet disappears completely into the rebellious, cool-guy persona of Dylan, hunching his shoulders and oblivious to those around him. Neither the film nor Chalomet tries to make Bob palatable, nice or comprehensible. In fact, he is called a jerk and an asshole to his face.

Norton plays Seeger as the saintly—and sanctimonious—leader of the folk music world in the early 1960s. Through Seeger, Dylan meets established folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and the two become musical collaborators as well as lovers. But mixed in with admiration is a trace of envy: both Seeger and Baez realize that the Messianic artist they’re watching is about to change the music world and they’re not exactly comfortable with ceding the limelight.

Dylan’s on-again, off-again relationship with Joan Baez does not sit well with his earnestly political Greenwich Village sweetheart Sylvie (Elle Fanning in a thankless role). Sylvie is a stand-in for Suze Rotolo, Bob’s GF IRL, who appeared with him on the cover of “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan” album (but you knew that.)

“Unknown” is replete with biopic drama, which, besides the romantic triangle of Bob-Joan-Sylvie, includes Dylan’s bumpy ascent to electric rock stardom. This ultimately drives Seeger and the insufferable musicologist Alan Lomax (Norbert-Leo Butz) bat-shit crazy. The climax occurs at the 1965 Newport folk Festival, when Seeger becomes so incensed he attempts to cut the electrical circuits during Dylan’s performance.

Facing off at the Festival against the folk-music purists are rock keyboardist Al Cooper (Charlie Tahan from “Ozark”) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), both of whom realize that the times they are changing and that Bob should change with them. “Track some mud on the carpet,” Cash advises.

But most of all it is Chalomet’s performance of Dylan’s songs—singing and strumming the guitar all by his talented self—that send this movie into music lover’s heaven. If you are not exploding with joy when you hear “Maggie’s Farm” or the whistle in “Highway 61” you obviously traded in your vinyls and turntable too early.

If you were too young to appreciate Dylan in the 1960s or you’ve not thought about him too deeply as of late (guilty), “A Complete Unknown” comes as a wonderful, welcome surprise. Even Dylan himself is said to like it. As for winning the hearts and minds of Oscar voters this spring, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Right toward this terrific movie, I’d say.

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