Having lived in Minneapolis, and worked alongside a man from Hibbing, Minnesota, I was a little disappointed that James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown’, carefully avoided the “cradle to grave” pacing of many of the genres pre existing examples. And while my own biases may have yearned for some time spent in most northern state in the Continental US, I was hopeful that the film would steer clear of other tropes we’re so accustomed to seeing.

I was disappointed to say the least. Timothee Chalamet’s Dylan lands in New York City to catch a spark and make his own kind of music. He came specifically to see folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) who is sick with Huntington’s disease. In the hospital he meets another folk legend in Pete Seeger, who’s portrayal by Edward Norton is a high point of the film any time he’s on screen. Dylan doesn’t seem to know what he wants or who he wants to be outside of his yearning to create new and original music. He has a fascination with rock and roll that Seeger, a folk purist, doesn’t seem to understand.

Part of the issue with making a Dylan biopic is the unknowability of who Bob Dylan was and still is. A closing credit notes that he’s the only musician to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and that he did not attend the ceremony. This man rarely speaks of his upbringing or his home of Hibbing. He is intensely private, and prefers people focus on his music rather that himself. Which is all well and good for his music, but it makes him a difficult central figure for a film.

So the movie focuses on his music. And it is of course good music. In order to get the volume of Dylan songs in they rarely let one play out in entirety, and while Dylan is trying to reinvent not just folk, but rock, and music at large, the film falls head first into the most eye rolling of tropes in that he wants to play his own kind of music, but the label won’t let him. Something we’ve seen before in countless biopics, including Mangold’s own ‘Walk the Line’.

Meanwhile Dylan’s various entanglements with women hold little weight to him, or to the film. His tryst with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) lacks heat, even while they sing together at the Newport Folk Festival. Alongside this relationship is a fictionalized version of a woman Dylan dated, named Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning). A huge part of the issue here is these trysts feel like they don’t mean anything to Dylan, so why would they mean anything to us?

Dylan eventually comes face to face with one of his rock and roll role models, Johnny Cash, portrayed in excellent fashion by Boyd Holbrook. Cash eggs Dylan on to lean into his rock and roll desires and shock the quaint attendees of the Newport Folk Festival. The climax of the film is Dylan following his dreams, fitting himself with wax wings and flying into the sun that is playing rock music for a gaggle of hippies that just want to hear ‘Blowing in the Wind’.

The biggest issue with the film is the stakes, it just never feels like anyone’s ever really fighitng against anything, or much is at risk. I’m sure it makes a fascinating book, the source material is after all New York Times Bestseller ‘Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties’. But as Dylan plays to the crowd that clearly doesn’t want to hear the new sound he’s been finessing I’m left asking this film in particular “Why?” for more reasons than one.

2.5/5