How Does It Feel? Electric. Dylan Biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’: Review
by Greg Brodsky
Monica Barbaro (as Joan Baez) and Timothée Chalamet (as Bob Dylan) in 2024’s A Complete Unknown
James Mangold, the director of the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, won’t need to ask film audiences “How does it feel?” Those four words, of course, are the backbone of the song “Like a Rolling Stone” that’s so central to the movie and to Dylan’s career. The name that was actually chosen works far better as the title of the brilliant film, officially opening on Christmas Day 2025. It’s based on the 2015 book by Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, and spans roughly four years in the Bard’s life, starting in 1961 as a not-so-innocent 20-year-old from Minnesota who comes to New York to seek fame and fortune, and culminating with his pivotal performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he was still just 24.
When we first see young Bobby, portrayed by Timothée Chalamet in a stunningly great performance, he’s just arrived in New York. On his very first night he travels to New Jersey to meet his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who’s confined to an institution. And who is visiting the legendary singer-songwriter’s bedside that very same night? None other than Pete Seeger, the reigning king of folk music, played pitch-perfectly by Edward Norton.
Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Photo: Macall Polay © 2024 Searchlight Pictures
[And here’s a warning for the tenth of one-percenters who are going to start nitpicking at minutiae that is really unrelated to great storytelling: don’t bother. No one cares that you know that it was at a 1966 Dylan concert in the U.K. where an audience member yelled “Judas” and not in ’65, as the film depicts. The precise date isn’t germane to the story, and neither are a few dozen other liberties that Mangold and the co-writer of the screenplay, Jay Cocks, took to mold the terrific script.]
Young Bob is seen scribbling lyrics at every chance he gets for songs that eventually become the canon that has made him among the handful of best songwriters the world has ever known. Those early classics include “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and “Masters of War,” convincingly performed by Chalamet for the soundtrack. And don’t try to count how many cigarettes Chalamet smokes: I lost track at 30.
Soon enough, Dylan meets Sylvie (a very fine Elle Fanning), whose character is based on Suze Rotolo, a fellow Greenwich Village bohemian, and the two begin dating. We’re introduced to Joan Baez (the stunning Monica Barbaro), who though just four months’ older than Bob, is already the reigning female folk singer, with several albums under her belt. You can figure out what happens when Sylvie travels to Italy for several months.
Through Chalamet, we see Dylan observe first Seeger, as he sings “Wimoweh” to a delighted auditorium audience, and later Baez in a variety of settings. Dylan is still developing his own style and is clearly transfixed by the live presentations of the pair.
Such key figures in Dylan’s sphere are portrayed, including his bull-in-a-china-shop manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler); Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), who quickly recognizes the talent in the newcomer; folk music archivist Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz), a traditionalist who tries to ignore the way the music times are a-changin’; and key members of his 1965 musical circle: Bob Neuwirth, Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield.
We follow the evolution of “Like a Rolling Stone” as Dylan bursts into a room singing a key lyric and hastily writing it in his notebook and strumming his guitar. Its recording session shows the serendipitous way in which Kooper, known as a guitarist, instinctively adds the song’s trademark swirling organ. The tension builds when Dylan butts heads with the producers of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Listen to Chalamet perform “Like a Rolling Stone”
Mangold peppers the film with such time capsule events as the Cold War, JFK’s assassination and the Beatles’ arrival in America, and their impact on the impressionable young Dylan. Ultimately, the film depicts his choice between remaining a folk singer as part of the Seeger, Lomax traditionalist camp or evolving with those changing times as a songwriter, artist and performer. Good decision.
Find a theater here. The film’s soundtrack is available for pre-order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
Related: Our interview with author Elijah Wald on his book, Dylan Goes Electric!
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