BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The new Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown" is a complete winner — mostly because, like Dylan, the title is a deliberate diversion.
The movie, in fact, shows the viewer precisely who Dylan was at the time portrayed in the film, 1961-65, and, in doing so, lays bare his brilliance — and significant faults, of which there were many.
The surprise is that such a straightforward approach has never before been tried on film.
There have been countless written accounts and documentaries about Dylan's early career, but never an un-stylized, unvarnished dramatization that gives such a personalized presentation.
It's as if you've been let into rooms as history was made.
"A Complete Unknown," rated R for language, 2 hours and 21 minutes, today-Jan. 2 at various Lehigh Valley theaters.
What makes the approach so successful in "A Complete Unknown" is the amazing acting.
Timothée Chalamet wholly embodies the young Dylan, both alluring and off-putting — so much so that he even adopts Dylan's body language, vocal turns and even physicality.
Ed Norton as Pete Seeger also is worth mentioning. He loses himself entirely in the role of the folk singer who knew he was in the company of greatness and was reluctant to stop it — and often even helped it — even when it conflicted with the safety of the professional world.
Well-known story — and songs
For any Dylanophile, the movie reverently follows the well-known stories of Dylan's early years in New York's Greenwich Village and his rapid rise to fame.
It shows his introduction to his ailing hero, folk singer Woody Guthrie, at a New Jersey hospital, where a performance of his "Song to Woody" stunned both Guthrie and Seeger.
It shows his relationship with muse Suze Rotolo (one of the movie's few stumbles is renaming her "Sylvie") and how she introduced him to the political climate that appeared in his early songs.
It shows of his conflicted professional and personal relationship with singer Joan Baez and how she helped introduce his music to a broader audience ready for a new voice.
It shows how the positive review of his music by New York Times critic Robert Shelton vaulted him professionally, and how manager Albert Grossman helped guide (and bully) Dylan to commercial success.
In doing so, the film displays how great that period of Dylan's career was, showing him writing and performing such time-honored and universally loved songs as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Girl From the North Country," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "The Times, They are a-Changing," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Maggie's Farm" and "Like a Rolling Stone" in a head-spinning four-year period.
(A personal disappointment: It misses "Positively Fourth Street," a direct put-down of the folk movement.)
Tapping into emotions
One huge reason for the film's success is that, unlike so many biopics that try to capture the subject's entire life, "A Complete Unknown" shows one segment of Dylan's life (a whole lot more followed; Bob's still adding to his story 60 years later.)
But it's a very important segment that helps explain the rest of his life.
The thrust of the film is Dylan's metamorphosis from a folk singer open to so much influence into a rock singer who blasts open his own path — culminating in his contentious appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that pushes folkies to force him from the stage even while the audience begs for more.
That leads to the film's second fault: Showing him telling his band, in the face of an angry crowd, to "Play it loud!" That actually happened two months earlier, at Dylan's famed 1965 show at London's Royal Albert Hall.
But, like almost everything else in the movie, it shows precisely what made (makes) Dylan great: He tapped the feelings and emotions of broad swaths of listeners and his songs gave them voice, saying exactly what they wanted to say.
Who says Dylan is a complete unknown?
