A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: James Mangold
Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning,
Monica Barbaro, Scott McNary, Boyd Holbrook
Bob Dylan, the early years, tracking the life and career of the shape-shifting trubadour from his arrival in New York City in 1961 to his electrified performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Timothée Chalamet plays the evasive, elusive Dylan, tousled hair, shades, cigarettes and all, and he's good. So is Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. Both do their own singing, along with Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. The week after I saw the movie, I was at a party where somebody suggested that you can't really appreciate Dylan if you're not at least in your 70s, and there might be something to that. For anybody who was around and remembers the period, the film will have an extra edge. At the same time, the art direction perfectly captures the era - check out the old Studebakers - recreating a time that seems like prehistory now, when, starting out at least, nobody knew who Bob Dylan was, and nobody cared.
