Neal Vitale Reviews: A Complete Unknown ****

[after only 16 years, I welcome my former editor and long-time friend Neal Vitale back to PSACOT]

This is an entertaining and enjoyable recounting of Bob Dylan's early career, from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to the legendary "Dylan goes electric" performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Though the film doesn't attempt to be painstakingly accurate, it seems to capture many of major events in Dylan's evolution quite well. 

There is excellent acting in the film. Timothée Chalamet makes a convincing Dylan, as does Ed Norton as Pete Seeger. The key women in the film - Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo (Suze Rotolo IRL) - receive somewhat short shrift, with far less film time devoted to understanding them and their relationships with Dylan. The film is bookended with lovely, bittersweet interactions between Dylan and his hero (and, ultimately, fan) Woody Guthrie.

In terms of helping understand Dylan, though, the film is less successful. Unless, of course, the point is that he is moody, exploitative, intentionally opaque, and, in all likelihood, a fabulist and trickster who invents chunks of his past to serve his needs. Answering a few of the “whys” would have been nice but probably too much to ask. 

(Chalamet has suggested that he would be open to a "Bob Dylan trilogy," carrying on to the various Dylan incarnations that followed what is presented in A Complete Unknown. I, for one, am a fan of that idea!)

Next Week: A Review of The Brutalist