‘A Complete Unknown’ leaves Dylan’s mystery blowing in the wind
Story by Ty BurrIf you’re over 60, chances are you’ve spent at least a few chapters of your life tangled up in Bob. If you’re under 30, Dylan is that musician who sings like a goat that your cool aunt likes. A life story of the man born Robert Zimmerman has got to serve somebody, but who? Choices must be made, timelines compressed, facts weighed against the legend. Not everybody must get stoned.
Adapting Elijah Wald’s fine 2015 history “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties,” “A Complete Unknown” opts for the legend, and ably enough for newcomers and folks who were never quite sure what all the fuss was about. Directed by James Mangold (“Walk the Line”), it’s a brisk, tuneful and very entertaining two hours and 20 minutes of bog-standard Hollywood biopic, with a popular and talented boychick in the lead to bring in Generation Z.
So how is the boychick? He’s excellent, even if he gives the second-best performance in the movie. The story is that Timothée Chalamet had been preparing to play the young Bob Dylan for five years, learning the guitar and harmonica and working hard to nail that singular moon-cow voice. The technical effort has paid off, but, more important, Chalamet conveys the presence of this upstart kid folkie — the certainty and sullenness, the ear that’s listening more to the siren songs in his head than to anyone in the room. The work ethic and the contempt, the restlessness and the masks, the burning lyrics and the voice of an ornery young prophet — it’s all there except for the lightness, the prankishness that Dylan possessed in his early years, before everyone mistook him for God. Chalamet’s Dylan is heavy with coming greatness.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/a-complete-unknown-leaves-dylan-s-mystery-blowing-in-the-wind/ar-AA1wmGNu?ocid=msedgntp&pc=EDBBAN&cvid=da909aa0739d43af8f1a5896402969ad&ei=123
