The problem with biopics is that you are meeting your heroes. It is best never to meet your heroes because they are better off as you imagine them.
In a clear Oscar bait, Timothée Chalamet gives Bob Dylan quite an interesting range – from his earnest beginning to an a**hole finish. The problem with A Complete Unknown (2024, directed by James Mangold) is that it does not know what to do with Bob Dylan. Thankfully, this biopic is not shrill hagiography, but it paints Dylan as 50 shades of jerk.
Who should we focus on? The young Bob Dylan, who seemingly invented a persona away from his government name, Robert Zimmerman, and claimed to have learned his guitar skills from working at a circus?
This piece was then unceremoniously dropped and never mentioned again. The movie paints Dylan as a self-serving prick and not the folk hero he was made out to be.
The supporting cast was treated as mere stepping stones or, worse, pivots for character development. It is painful that Edward Norton was snubbed for an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the quiet and generous greatness of Pete Seeger. It is baffling that Monica Barbaro was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Joan Baez, while Elle Fanning’s vulnerability was ignored. Fanning portrayed the entire gamut of emotions—giddiness, rejection, and realization—in more minutes, while Chalamet’s Dylan was scowling through most of the film. Even for less than five minutes, Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash managed to make Bob Dylan look like a petulant brat.
What was Bob Dylan struggling against? Biopics show overcoming struggles to reach the stratosphere: Freddie Mercury (portrayed by Rami Malek) went against white supremacist homophobia and AIDS to become immortal.
June Cash (portrayed by Reese Witherspoon) was in a conundrum regarding her faith, talent, and affection for Johnny Cash.
In A Complete Unknown, Elle Fanning’s character was the only one to correctly read Dylan: that he is a contrarian. That’s it? Going against the grain? The heroic shots came from Dylan defying his market and the music management. He was whining about how fame was getting to him and the way he produced music. This is a white man’s tears.
It is a huge disservice to Dylan and his music, for they helped America navigate a bewildering series of fires like the Civil Rights and Vietnam War, which were just mentioned in passing, with no artistic engagement between the social upheavals and Dylan. That is the tragedy of this film because Dylan is among the sparks of the fires that hailed societal changes. Yet, Chalamet and this movie made Dylan look more like a pretty sparkler.
This movie did not show any shred of credible evidence as to why Dylan is the only singer-songwriter to have been awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social