A Complete Unknown review – Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan is an electric revelation

James Mangold’s biopic follows the rise of the era-defining star with Chalamet brilliantly embodying his shapeshifting allure

Not Judas – Jesus. Timothée Chalamet’s hilarious and seductive portrayal of Bob Dylan makes him the smirking, scowling and unwilling leader of his generation, whose refusal to submit to the crucifixion of folk-acoustic purity is his own crucifixion. Chalamet gives us a semi-serious ordeal of someone who is part Steinbeck hero, part boyband star, part sacrificial deity. On being derisively asked if he is God, Chalamet’s Dylan replies: “How many more times? Yes.” Chalamet shows us the mysterious burden of celebrity and zeitgeist-ownership endured by a singer-songwriter who transcends John the Baptist (in the form of fatherly and sad-eyed folk mentor Pete Seeger – wonderfully played by Edward Norton) and finally has to wake up his dozing Apostles in Garden of Gethsemane with electric guitars played, in his legendary words, “fuckin’ loud”.

James Mangold’s biopic, co-scripted by him and Jay Cocks, is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties; it’s the story of Dylan’s musical and personal adventures in the first half of the decade as he electrified the world of folk in every sense. He was carried onwards and upwards by the folk movement appreciative of his poetic talent, but dissatisfied with what he saw as folk’s regressive, museum-oriented placidity (and Dylan is shown here not engaging explicitly with its socialist traditions); he is yearning for the new modern energy of rock’n’roll as the musical form which he has to master if it is not to surpass him.

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