Producers: Fred Berger, James Mangold, Alex Heineman, Bob Bookman, Peter Jaysen, Alan Gasmer, Jeff Rosen and Timothée Chalamet   Director: James Mangold    Screenplay: James Mangold and Jay Cocks Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy, Will Harrison, P.J. Byrne, Eriko Hatsune, Big Bill Morganfield, Charlie Tahan and Michael Chernus   Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Grade: B+

Every biographical movie, especially if it’s about a real person, is confronted by the “Rosebud” problem, the expectation that it will posit an explanation of what really made its subject tick.  James Mangold has decided to address it with a pre-emptive strike by titling his biopic about celebrated singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with an implicit admission that he doesn’t have the answer.  And he confirms it by ignoring Dylan’s “formative” years to concentrate on just one slice of Dylan’s life, though admittedly a significant one in his artistic evolution—the time between his arrival in New York in January, 1961, and his famous (to some at the time, infamous) performance at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, when his use of electric instruments caused a scandal among folk music devotees. 

The limited timeframe points up the fact that Mangold isn’t trying to provide an explanation of the enigmatic persona that Dylan, with his inspired lyrics and gnomic utterances, has cultivated over the decades; not for him the sort of multifaceted portrait that Todd Haynes attempted—none too successfully—by having Dylan played by no fewer than six actors in his experimental, episodic “I’m Not There” (2207).  Rather the film uses a single actor, who doesn’t have to alter his appearance drastically over the four-year period.  While managing an exceptional feat of impersonation, down to doing his own singing, Timothée Chalamet does, however, suggest the more subtle alterations in attitude that Dylan exhibited as he rose from small-time newcomer to established star on the folk music scene, and then outraged purists by moving into rock.  Yet at the film’s close Dylan remains, as he was at the beginning, an opaque figure, no longer the unknown he was in 1961, to be sure, but still elusive as a person.   

There are, however, facets that Mangold and his co-writer veteran Jay Cocks, using Elijah Wald’s 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties” as a basic source, latch onto.  Perhaps the most obvious is Dylan’s propensity for self-invention, already clear when the nineteen-year old arrives in New York having hitched a ride from Minnesota.  His actual name was Robert Zimmerman, but he’d already adopted the pseudonym under which he’d become famous; and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a version of Suze Rotolo, with whom he lived in Greenwich Village, is shocked when she happens on some documents that reveal his real identity.   

Before encountering Russo, though, he’s accomplished what he came to New York for—meeting his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who’s in the hospital, incapacitated by the Huntington’s Disease that would eventually kill him.  Dylan’s introduced by Guthrie’s friend Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who, impressed by the song Dylan sings in Guthrie’s honor, invites him to stay with his family and arranges for his first public performances at venues in the Village.  There, among others, he meets Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), with whom he develops a relationship both personal and professional.

Dylan’s rise can legitimately be called meteoric, due not only to his on-stage charisma and extraordinary song-writing ability but—as Russo and Baez both note—his ambition.  He quickly gains an aggressive manager in Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), who gets him a lucrative record contract in an era when folk music was all the rage.  And he becomes a voice of protest with his own songs, which become anthems for activists in the early sixties and make him a certified celebrity.

But Dylan becomes disenchanted with the established folk scene that Seeger, and the Newport Folk Festival, represent.  A chance meeting with Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison) leads him to add electric instruments to his act, and friendship with Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) encourages his rebellious streak.  By 1965, the transformation from cocky upstart to smoldering icon is well advanced, and his insistence on performing at Newport in a way that defies pure folk tradition causes a rift with the festival’s organizers, led by Alan Lomax (Norbert Lee Butz), as well as with Seeger and many in the crowd.

Such is the trajectory of Mangold’s film, a tale of a storybook rise and a temporary hiccup which proves only a blip on a continuing upward path.  Within that broader context, however, the film makes another point about Dylan—that he is, or at least was at this time, what Baez refers to at one point as an asshole, confident in his talent and, as a result, often demeaning of others.  Even when he sees Baez onstage for the first time he remarks that her music is “pretty—perhaps too pretty.”  And as his star rises he treats many of those who have helped him along the way badly, most notably Seeger, whom Norton plays with a touching aura of wide-eyed idealism that makes it especially painful when he feels Dylan has disrespected, even betrayed him.  (There’s an especially telling scene in which Seeger is hosting a local TV program and Dylan enters unexpectedly after initially begging off; what follows is a niftily-written, and revealing, scene in which the two are joined by Big Bill Morganfield as fictional bluesman Jesse Moffette, whom Seeger has enlisted as an emergency replacement.)

Norton, like Chalamet, does his own singing here, and in a most credible voice.  Both men give performances, in fact, that are of award caliber, nuanced and compelling within an admittedly limited range.  Barbaro goes that route as well, and makes Baez the formidable figure she was both on and off the stage; her duets with Chalamet are very convincing recreations.  Among the four leads only Fanning disappoints, and that’s more the result of her character than her acting; by the last reel she has little to do but look stricken as Dylan moves on and she feels them growing further apart as his fame grows. The supporting cast is a strong one, though Holbrook isn’t the most convincing Johnny Cash one can imagine.   

Though shot in New Jersey, with Jersey City standing in, not always comfortably, for New York City, “A Complete Unknown” is visually evocative, with Phedon Papamichael’s darkly burnished cinematography expertly setting off the period feel of François Audouy’s production design and Arianne Phillips’ costumes.  Editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris manage the transitions efficiently in covering the four-year span and the changes of Dylan’s personality within it.  They also allow the great swaths of music to infuse the narrative, the musical numbers not truncated or chopped to pieces.          

Dylan’s legions of obsessive admirers, of course, may stew over what’s been left out or altered for dramatic effect by Mangold.  But while it’s neither perfect as history nor even particularly revelatory about its subject, Mangold’s well-crafted film, with another striking performance by Chalamet, proves a worthy addition to the cornucopia of existing tomes and documentaries about a still enigmatic artist.