This time, going electric doesn’t change the world, but it’s stylish.
Thankfully, this music biopic falls not in the life-spanning category, but in the other one: a specific time period within the subject’s career – in this case, the leadup to Bob Dylan going electric. On the plus side: A Complete Unknown spares us the contrived, well-worn high-low-high story beats. On the downside: events simply happen, and the less knowledge you have of them going in, the less they’ll mean by the time we reach the marker of a film which didn’t finish telling its story, or told the less interesting story: the denouement title cards which describe events that happen after the movie ends.
As you’d expect, Timothée Chalamet‘s charm, energy, and magnetism power his performance – not so much impersonating the affect, but inhabiting an essence of Bob Dylan. Yet whenever director James Mangold‘s frame finds her, it’s Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez who draws dazzling focus – even when sharing a scene with the ever-luminous Elle Fanning, which both is by design and speaks volumes of how little she has to do here – so much so that Barbaro alone might make A Complete Unknown worth watching.
You know what? True:
Also enjoyable: Arianne Phillips‘ period costumes, François Audouy‘s production design, and Phedon Papamichael‘s cinematography, all of which are beautiful; and the liltingly rhythmic editing by Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris conveys the breezy cadence of the storytelling. Yet – and let me be, no doubt, the 1,000th person to make the obvious, dreary comparison – in a world where we have Cate Blanchett‘s iconic interpretation of Bob Dylan (sorry, ‘Jude’) in I’m Not There (2007), A Complete Unknown isn’t essential, or even always engaging; but it looks and sounds good.
Further Viewing
The Making Of Broadcast Special (via Searchlight):
Timothée Chalamet refuses to share anything of his process – but his signature earnest dedication tells plenty (via 60 Minutes):