Through Bob Dylan's music, lyrics, and Timothée Chalamet’s superb acting, we feel we have rubbed shoulders with greatness, even when it is full of flaws, self-doubts, warts and all, observes Aseem Chhabra.
Bob Dylan is one of the most complex artists of our times.
There are so many personas to the Nobel Prize winning artist that in 2007, Director Todd Haynes experimented with the idea of hiring six actors, including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger and have each of them portray one facet of Dylan’s life and work.
That film, I’m Not There, was a critical success, although I am not sure how much of it connected with the audience.
The new Dylan film, A Complete Unknown, is equally ambitious, and also very entertaining, although Director James Mangold (Copland, Girl, Interrupted) restricts the musician’s life story to the first four years of his career, up to a key point when the singer made the controversial (some would say unpopular) decision to move beyond just being engaged in folk music.
Mangold also directed another wonderful biopic of a musician, Walk The Line (2005), about Johnny Cash and his second wife June Carter. That film won Reese Witherspoon an Oscar in the Best Actress category.
A Complete Unknown comes to India after receiving eight Oscar nominations, a celebrated German premiere in the Special Gala section at the Berlinale and a Screen Actors Guild Award presented to Timothée Chalamet for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.
The SAG Awards have opened up possibilities for Chalamet in this weekend leading to the Academy Award ceremony on March 2 (that will be early March 3 morning in India).
Although the Oscar voting was closed by the time of the SAG ceremony, the award and Chalamet’s acceptance speech may indicate that the needle has slightly moved in his favour.
With two Oscar nominations (the first being for Call Me by Your Name), the 29-year-old actor talked about spending five years of his life learning to play the guitar, sing in Dylan’s voice, and capture every gesture, nuance and twitches of the musician.
The speech earned a lot of love from his fellow actors who are the largest voting block for the Academy Awards.
Mangold’s biopic is based on a script he co-wrote with Martin Scorsese’s frequent collaborator Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, Silence).
The script itself is based on a book by writer and musician Elijah Wald.
The title Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seegar, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties, could also be the 13 words elevator pitch for the film. Mangold and Cocks’ screenplay is nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.
The film begins in 1961 when a 19-year-old Dylan hitchhikes to Manhattan wearing a corduroy hat, a scruffy woolen scarf wrapped around his neck and gloves knitted from the same brown wool, and blue jeans.
He is carrying a backpack and a guitar case.
Those are all of his worldly possessions.
He is looking for musician Woodie Guthrie (Scoot McNairy).
When he learns that his idol is hospitalised with Huntington’s disease in Morris Plains, New Jersey, Dylan goes to the hospital where he finds a very sick Guthrie with his friend folk singer Pete Seegar (a fine and deservedly Oscar nominated performance by Edward Norton).
Upon Guthrie’s request (the musician cannot speak), Dylan sings Song to Woody, which he had specifically written for the ailing musician. And as he strums the guitar and sings Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I Wrote You This Song, the energy shifts in the dreary hospital room.
Most importantly, Seeger is blown away by this young unknown musician’s talent.
The film tells us Seeger had a lot to do with Dylan’s sudden rise in career, until their falling apart over what future musical direction the singer should take.
Along the way Dylan, a quiet man who barely speaks sentences with four or five words, meets a range of people -- rising artists like Johnny Cash, who became his good friend and two women, Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning playing Dylan’s girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who appeared with the artist on the cover of his second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro, nominated for the Best Supporting Actress trophy), who was already established as a singer when she first heard Dylan in a club in downtown Manhattan.
Dylan kept going back to Russo, even as there were major strains and heartbreak in their love life.
There were bigger issues with Baez, who was senior to Dylan, but was moved and inspired by his lyrics.
Perhaps because he was young and naïve, Dylan gave Baez the rights to make a cover version of what would become his best-known song, Blowin’ In The Wind, even before he actually sang it himself.
Dylan and Baez’s relationship was full on drama.
They were partners and lovers but also collaborated and performed together.
Dylan described her voice as 'maybe too beautiful'.
Even when things were tough between them and they could not stand each other’s presence, the two still sang together, such as during the Newport Folk Festival.
In the film, as Dylan walks on the stage Baez says to him, 'I picked something appropriate.'
'Appropriate?' Dylan asks in a sarcastic tone.
Baez responds by saying, 'Just f*** off and sing.'
Then the two perform Dylan’s song It Ain’t Me Babe. They are so good and in synch with each other. No one can read that things are going rough between them.
In a 2023 documentary, I Am A Noise that premiered at the Berlinale, Baez spoke about how Dylan broke her heart.
'I was just stoned on that talent,' she added.
In 1975, Baez wrote the song Diamonds & Rust (also the title of her album), which clearly spoke of her and Dylan’s relationship.
Mangold’s film also examines what sudden fame can mean for a young man born in Duluth, Minnesota, who travels all the way to New York City to start a music career.
In one of the most moving and honest moments in the film, Dylan speaks to Russo about how everyone wants a piece of his success.
He says he feels annoyed when people ask him where his songs come from.
'But when you watch their faces,' he says, 'they are not asking where the song comes from. They are asking why the song didn’t come to them.'
Two hours and 21 minutes later, as the credits role, we still do not have a complete understanding of the enigma called Bob Dylan.
I guess no one will ever know the man fully.
But in the universe that Mangold creates, Dylan is not completely unknown to us anymore. Through his music, lyrics, and Chalamet’s superb acting, we feel we have rubbed shoulders with greatness, even when it is full of flaws, self-doubts, warts and all.
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