James Mangold clearly loves Bob Dylan, but after his two-and-a-half-hour film portrait of the man, it couldn’t be less clear why. Twenty years on from his both lauded and mocked Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, Mangold has returned to give Dylan the very same milquetoast trip down memory lane with A Complete Unknown.
Rather than zeroing in on one specific moment in the life of this titanic artist or blowing up his life from beginning to present, Mangold chooses the middle road, covering a span of four-ish years, from Dylan’s star discovery until he goes electric. In this short span, Mangold packs in moments between Dylan and Sylvie Russo, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Bob Neuwirth, Al Kooper, Johnny Cash, and more 20th-century icons with all the grace of a history buff dad spitting facts at you. It’s impassioned and informative, but there’s not much to glean besides the fact that someone read a lot of books and wanted to get the facts straight.
Handsome and competent enough, there’s a menial swagger about the film that makes it hard to say A Complete Unknown is a bad time at the movies. The production value is off the charts, the cast has mostly come to play, and hearing Dylan’s early hits played on theater speakers is a delight, but that’s all there is to the fire. Mangold’s direction and script leave much to be desired. His craftsmanship and general sturdiness get the project across the finish line, but Todd Haynes already lapped him five times over. Being pedantic over facts and chronology for the sake of accuracy gets stale quickly, especially when compared to Haynes’s interpretive 2007 masterpiece I’m Not There, which fragments Dylan and his legacy into six people across time and explores who he was by getting at the eclectic and rebellious essence of him rather than relaying the accounts of history.
Taking the more restrictive and accurate approach limits Mangold’s ability to examine who Dylan is as a person or an artist or a lover, or any of the many labels placed on him by both self-definition and the public eye. Timothée Chalamet does a fine job as the man – his voice rarely wavers and his physical embodiment is quite impressive – but his performance always feels restrained to an impression and little more. He’s never given proper space to express himself within a moment, instead confined to repeating the beats of history’s record. Likewise, the film portrays the shockwaves Dylan sent through the folk scene of the ‘60s, his erratic genius and turbulent relationships, but not once does Mangold show any deeper understanding of or curiosity toward it.
One could argue that the title, cribbed from Dylan’s "Like a Rolling Stone," is Mangold’s view of Dylan: that he is and forever will be an enigma, a complete unknown to all besides himself. However, Mangold is nowhere near arch enough as a filmmaker to pull off that complex allure. Instead, the film plays as an obtuse time capsule with deep reverence for ‘60s Americana and the artistry it birthed, but without an inkling as to what sparks that reverence.
Reese Witherspoon won her Best Actress Oscar for her jubilant, intelligent turn as June Carter in Walk the Line nearly 20 years ago, so it’s baffling to me that, while repeating the playbook beat for beat, Mangold decentralizes the obvious female lead in his latest music biopic. Unfortunately, the dynamic Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez is denied her equal footing. Barbaro lights up the screen with quiet passion and assured command in every scene. She gives a star-making performance that is all the more astonishing because of how little she is given to do. In most scenes, Baez is written as little more than a scorned lover or envious peer, but Barbaro imbues every opportunity with a vibrating stillness, not to mention her knockout voice when featured. It’s during these scenes that the film threatens to come to life, especially in one moment with Dylan and Baez singing together in bed. There’s a palpable remorse and tension between the two, as lovers on separate paths desperate to find solace in the other. That spark of a real and interesting film, as layered as it is entertaining, is gone as quickly as it came.
Beyond the fumbling of Barbaro, looking back at Walk the Line, one has to wonder how he didn't bother to update the big break formula. Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) so entirely eviscerated the sedate nature of Mangold’s Cash that it’s shocking to see him revert to those same tropes. Scenes between great artists still play out expositorily, agents and managers still debate over whether or not the great artist will actually do the wild thing he’s known for having done, and lovers still silently quarrel over this difficult prodigy. The playbook is still intact and, in some morbid way, that might be Mangold’s most baller move. This makes the decision to not explicitly make the film a two-hander all the more curious.
For taking on such a monumental, eclectic and defiant figure as Bob Dylan, Mangold’s biopic is the embodiment of the sweet and capable mediocrity Dylan fought in the very events the film so rotely depicts. By the end of the infamous Newport ‘65 performance, the night that split the ‘60s, Dylan is being yelled at to stop experimenting and play the hits instead. Mangold adores and admires Dylan’s brash and bold resistance to the expectations of consistency placed upon him, so it’s all the more disappointing that Mangold is much more comfortable playing the hits.
-August
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