Early in the film, Bob Dylan says, “You can be beautiful or you can be ugly. But you can’t be plain.” I wholeheartedly agree, because A Complete Unknown is one of the most plain biopics I’ve seen in a while. Music biopics have been a huge trend in Hollywood lately, with films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Elvis, and Back to Black arriving in theaters. But before we get the upcoming biopics about Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and the Beatles, we are getting a film about Bob Dylan, a musician who has been making music since the ’50s.
A Complete Unknown might be the flattest biopic I have seen. With all these musician biopics gracing the big screen, standing out above the rest is a growing challenge. And as much as I was hoping director James Mangold would rebound after the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, he has made another film that feels like a generic retread of everything we have seen done better in other films. What makes it worse is that this is a movie that I wanted to like, and after searching for good qualities in this film for a while, I found that I ran out of them after a few minutes.
From the beginning of A Complete Unknown, we have excellent production design that takes us to 1960s New York. The soundscape sometimes allows us to feel as if the streets were made of music. We quickly meet Bob Dylan, who is portrayed fantastically by Timothée Chalamet. Chalamet is one of the biggest young names in Hollywood now because he has consistently turned in phenomenal performances. His work earlier this year in Dune: Part Two was masterful, and he now channels Bob perfectly. From the voice to the way he doesn’t always enunciate, to the Minnesotan accent, Chalamet’s work in this movie is splendid.
Another exceptional directorial choice from Mangold is not using a lot of non-diegetic music. The songs are performed live, and the decision not to drown out anything in a musical score allows the vocals to speak for themselves and show the beauty of the song. But that sums up all the positives about this movie. About a half-hour into the film, you realize that this story is not going anywhere emotionally resonant.
Early on, the screenplay establishes that Bob is holding something back about his past; we don’t know much about him and what’s driving him forward. There are no answers to these questions, and it’s hard to connect to anything happening onscreen when the protagonist is being held at arm’s length.
He meets a girl named Sylvie, portrayed by Elle Fanning; they have already moved in together in the scene after they meet. Chalamet and Fanning have zero romantic chemistry with each other. Perhaps that’s the point because their relationship does not last for very long without conflict, but the screenplay from Mangold and Jay Cocks asks for this subplot to be one of the key emotional centers of the film. If the heart of your film is barely beating, that’s not a good sign.
For the majority of A Complete Unknown, there is no conflict. Particularly in the first half, Bob does not have a clear goal, and there is no reason to root for him. All we know about him is that he’s a talented songwriter. He’s stoic in a way that shuts you out rather than makes you wonder and ask questions about him. Does he look for recognition? Fame? Success? This movie spends the first half with no idea what he wants. Bob also commits an amoral act in his romantic relationship that instantly turns the audience against him. There is no reason to enjoy spending time with Bob. He’s such an asshole in a way that isn’t fascinating.
Movies with terrible people as the protagonists are often able to get by by making them likable, making us hate them so much that we root against them, or with a performance so magnetic that you can’t wait to see what happens next, similar to a car crash you can’t look away from. A Complete Unknown has none of that. Bob Dylan is quiet and uncharismatic. You aren’t happy for him when he receives fame and recognition for his music because you’re not in his head enough to know what he wants. There’s a scene where he’s angry because he’s in a room where everyone wants to talk to him and he’s mad because everyone wants him to be someone else. This anger feels unearned because he’s surrounded by people who adore his work. He simply comes across as ungrateful.
A later scene, when Bob gets into a physical altercation at a bar, earns this anger much more. But we don’t feel for any of his relationships the same way he doesn’t care for any of them. The more indifferent Bob is to everything, the more indifferent the audience can become. There isn’t a lot of emotion in Bob’s voice, so the movie relies on characters like Sylvie for pathos. It almost works in an early scene when Sylvie watches Bob perform, and the camera pushes in on her face, and we see all of her internal conflict about being with a man surrounded by adoration. But the scene where this would all reach a boiling point afterward is skipped over entirely. It feels like the most dramatic part gets cut out and we catch up with these two later with some poor exposition.
It works even less when, nearly an hour later in the film, we have a scene that feels almost like a copy-and-paste of this moment from earlier. It’s the same character conflicts recycled again. Perhaps we would feel worse for Sylvie if she knew certain information the audience knew. Still, the fact that this movie keeps her in the dark about this information and has her continue to act the way she does causes her emotional outbursts to feel out of turn rather than as justified as they are. Perhaps we would care more about Sylvie if we cared about her relationship with Bob, but once again, they have no chemistry, and we do not root for them.
But let’s get back to Bob: what does he want? It becomes abundantly clear halfway through that Bob does not want to perform the folk songs that audiences adore him for. He wants to transition to electrically amplified rock, but the world won’t accept him for anything beyond what he’s done. But this angle feels dull and reductive of Bob Dylan’s decades of contributions to music. A Complete Unknown is set in a 4-year period that never makes you feel joy, whether he’s performing folk songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “The Times They Are a-Changin'” or his electric rock like “Maggie’s Farm” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”
At worst, it’s reductive, but at best, it’s just a generic recount of an artist wanting to break free from social norms. It’s not electrifying or rousing. It doesn’t make you feel anything. This is a joyless movie because Bob Dylan seems physically incapable of feeling joy throughout the film. It’s not sad or dramatic enough to earn accolades beyond what we’ve seen from other biopics. What does Bob have to lose if he changes to electric rock? Would he lose the fame for which he has nothing but contempt? Chalamet’s exceptional work is drowned out by a movie that doesn’t have enough conflict, drama, or stakes.
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives outweigh the positive aspects making it a struggle to get through.
Disclosure: ComingSoon received a screener for our A Complete Unknown review.
