From 1961 to 1965, Bob Dylan's life as a musical icon is chronicled in 2024's A Complete Unknown. "I met one man who was wounded in love". Indeed.
Anyhow most biopics about actual, famous people are recommendable because there's always a godlike performance to accompany (and sometimes overshadow) the whole kit and caboodle. In "Unknown", Timothee Chalamet completely immerses himself into character via Dylan, singing like him and talking like him and getting all his mannerisms just right. Come Oscar time circa 2025, Timmy boy might need to clear space for one of the shelves in his probably big-arse abode. He may just collect ye olde statuette come March.
Chalamet's transformation and dramatization validity aside, do I think A Complete Unknown is a masterpiece in filmmaking from usual, biographical monger James Mangold? Not completely (pun intended) but I admire Jim's rich sense of time and place, his method of generating early 60s, viewer escapism. I also dug where he put the camera, as Bob Dylan's four years of depiction feel like an effectively languid, slow burn. Production values, set design, and "cultural decade", flight(s) of fancy within "Unknown" are all top-notch. "He's not selling any alibis". No Bob's not, never.
So why am I hesitating in announcing A Complete Unknown as the best vehicle of the year. Well for starters it's edited choppily and a tad overlong, recycling Jay Cocks and Mangold's screenplay while not having much of a diegesis of its own to bounce off of. Added to that, Bob Dylan is not portrayed as the most likable dude in the world here. I mean sure Chalamet is brilliant but his persona as well as the overall conch of "Unknown" keep you at a distance, not letting you crash the veritable party. The film feels like a chronological, "peeking in" documentary and/or 141-minute folk concert when it could've delved a little deeper. Near-great "unknown".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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