First off, when I said I was going to attend the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown featuring Timothee Chalamet, my lovely wife Debbie pointed out my aversion to “seeing movies I lived through,” i.e. movies that took place during my lifetime that I’m going to quibble with every little detail the filmmakers get “wrong,” in my humble opinion.

Secondly, I know WAY too much about Dylan (way FAR too much) in the time covered by A Complete Unknown, 1961-1965.  I saw Bob Dylan (and The Hawks, his backing band that later became The Band) live at Vet’s Memorial in 1965, when I was in the eighth grade, so I’m inevitably gonna bring a little too much info to the proverbial musical table.

Thirdly, many (most) Hollywood “rock & roll” biopics suck; starting with – but not limited to – The Runaways, Rocket Man, and Not Fade Away.  (That last one’s not exactly a biopic, but Steve Van Zandt was involved and I expected MUCH, much more than I got.)  (Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t suck, but I never liked Queen, and only went to the movie because Debbie wanted to see it, so I’m hardly one to judge.)

All that being said, A Complete Unknown was a really, really good movie and a fairly good representation of the times it covered.  I highly recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in Bob Dylan’s career in the mid-60’s and/or a good way to kill two hours & 20 minutes of your day.

First, the Good Stuff…..

1) Timothee Chalamet absolutely NAILS his representation of Bob Dylan.  I had pretty much written off the movie until Chalamet appeared on the Stephen Colbert show and conducted a good part of his interview time to answering Colbert’s 2024 questions as Dylan might have in 1964.  That kinda sold me on laying out my non-hard-earned Social Security nine or ten bucks at AMC Easton. 

2) The actual physical representation of the times (New York City, Newport, R.I. 1961-1965) is pretty phenomenal (considering that a lot of the movie was actually filmed in New Jersey, according to the InterWideWeb).  Sometime during one of Chalamet’s early songs in the movie I actually had tears in my eyes, remembering that part of the 60’s and how innocent a time it was; before John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam War, and the invention of Peter, Paul & Mary fucked everything up.

3) The musical performances by Chalamet as Dylan, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez were RIGHT ON the money – surprisingly, to me – because I never count on success in that area of filmmaking, even in full-on music-driven motion pictures.  (BTW, Elle Fanning’s portrayal of Suze Rotolo – Dylan’s early NYC girlfriend and the cover-girl on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – seemed very real & heartfelt.) (Further BTW; how ridiculous was it that Rotolo declined to sign off on having her name used in the movie – necessitating “Sylvia Russo” – when dating Bob Dylan made her a public figure?  On the other hand, privacy is privacy, so I guess good for Suze.)     

Okay, that’s 500 words on the good stuff in A Complete Unknown.  I’m gonna try to keep the Bad Stuff to 300 or so…….

The Bad Stuff…..

1) As good as some of the characterizations were, there were a few outright DISASTERS, starting with Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.  First off – as befits a Hollywood movie – Barbaro was FAR too pretty to play Joan Baez, who (and I’m gonna attempt to be kind here) was NOT anybody’s idea of a Leading Lady in a Hollywood movie.  (If I were NOT being kind I would characterize her as a dog; woof woof.)  (editing note: Debbie wanted me to eliminate that parenthetical.)  That being said, Barbaro as Joan Baez was a Master Stroke compared to casting some mook named Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.  I have NEVER seen as wrong-headed a casting choice as this travesty.  I cannot fathom director James Mangold (who directed the Cash biopic Walk The Line, for chrissakes!) making this big an error when the rest of the movie was so good.  Where was Joaquin Phoenix when we needed him?

2) As confirmed by my good friend/drummer extraordinaire Jim Johnson, there was NOT ONE mention of The Beatles in the entire movie, as if Dylan thought up “going electric” all by his lonesome. Of course he did it because of The Beatles. I have four words to say to you: girls; girls, girls. girls.  (Plus it’s not as if Dylan would have been unaware of what The Rolling Stones had been doing with electrified Chicago blues or The Byrds with his own “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The Greenwich Village folk scene didn’t exist in a musical vacuum, despite how much Irwin Silber of Sing Out! magazine wanted it to.)

3) At two hours & 20 minutes the movie was probably 20 minutes too long, and lagged a bit in the middle.  Plus I’ve read that Dylan himself signed off on some of the more problematic “errors” in the film; i.e. moving the “Judas/Play loud” audience interaction from the 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall show in England to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.  On the other hand, A Complete Unknown never claimed to be a documentary, so I’ll give Mangold some leeway.  You’ve gotta put asses in the seats and Rock Snobs like me are ALWAYS gonna bitch about SOMETHING.

The Final Word….. 

Am I gonna go see A Complete Unknown again sometime this week?  Yeah I am.  Did A Complete Unknown make me get out my Bob Dylan Live In 1966 - The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert double-CD set and listen to it all the way through?  Yeah it did.

Go see the movie, it was really pretty great. – Ricki C. / January 5th, 2025

Ricki’s original blog about seein’ Bob Dylan in 1965 linked here…..Show I Saw in the 1960’s part one: Bob Dylan & The Hawks, 11/19/1965…..

I’m of two minds putting a video clip here; it’s just to illustrate some of my characterization points. Don’t let it decide whether you attend.

Ricki C. is 72 years old. His first favorite rock & roll song was Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” when he was five years old, riding in his sainted Italian father’s Oldsmobile. He figures his last favorite rock & roll song will be by either Elliott Murphy or Ian Hunter, sometime in the future.