A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

A Guide to All Creative Directors

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Timothée Chalamet's Bob Dylan speaks to the younger generation

The young star stars in the biopic A Complete Unknown

Timothée Chalamet's Bob Dylan speaks to the younger generation  The young star stars in the biopic A Complete Unknown

«Who do you want to be?», asks Sylvie’s character to Bob Dylan, played by modern star Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold. It’s a question Dylan has heard many times but has never wanted to answer. It’s impossible when you are everyone and no one at the same time, when you are a “mysterious minstrel,” a genius destined to forever change the face of folk. This is also why the screen has never managed to provide a clear portrait of the artist, especially when large, ambitious projects have tried. To the point that Todd Haynes, in his I’m Not There, had him played by no less than six different actors, each with their own chapter in a film – Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2007 – that does not depict him at different ages of his life, but rather in different phases all tied to his musical poetics. Even Martin Scorsese, for the documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, chose not to use too many words, to limit interviews, and to remain focused on the core: the music. The music is an undeniable element in any depiction of the life, true or false and sometimes both, of the elusive Bob Dylan.

Even in A Complete Unknown – a title taken from the song that marked the artist’s shift to electric, Like a Rolling Stone – there are many of the songwriter’s tracks, repeated and performed almost in their entirety, with few cuts or interruptions. Bob Dylan’s life is told through his music, with phrases that have already been spoken by the songwriter himself. Any other portrayal would be impossible. Mangold knows this, even while creating a work different from those of Haynes and Scorsese; a film with a more straightforward interpretation that reaches the audience directly – perhaps even more conventional. It is a classic narrative, as is often the case with the cinema of the director of Indiana Jones and Girl, Interrupted, which adds a piece to Mangold’s universe: in A Complete Unknown, Dylan meets Johnny Cash, the folk, blues, and country singer who the director and screenwriter had focused on twenty years earlier in Walk the Line, played by Joaquin Phoenix, a film that brought Reese Witherspoon her Oscar for Best Actress for her role as June Carter.

In Mangold’s new film, Johnny Cash shares the same role as Pete Seeger, a mentor played with gentle firmness by Edward Norton, and Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s idol who inspired him to explore the streets of New York to meet the ailing legend and, in his words, “maybe catch a sparkle.” It is the entire folk scene that James Mangold incorporates in A Complete Unknown, from Dylan’s many faces to his artistic (and romantic) duality with Joan Baez, whose on- and off-stage relationship the film explores. Although the work strives to maintain a sense of elusiveness, especially when it comes to its protagonist, the film’s timeline is limited to the early years of the musician’s career, his rise to fame, how it engulfed him, and, most importantly, his desire not to be labeled. This shape-shifting for Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, does not mean complete transformation but rather making modifications to his existence (and essence). Nothing is static, least of all music, particularly when it is as tied to and imbued with the contemporary as the songs of the songwriter – the only musical artist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the award’s history, who voluntarily chose not to attend the ceremony.

Just as Dylan was able to speak to his generation, so Timothée Chalamet does through his performance. Viewers can connect with a genuinely new side of the artist: not just the undisputed giant, the unassailable talent, but also the young man who had to start by recording known covers of other folk artists because no one believed his words could matter to the world. Imagine discovering, instead, that they had the power to change it. Chalamet’s portrayal adds another layer to the pages of music history on the big screen, with a biopic that positions itself among the many productions defining the genre, including the more recent ones. The actor is not a carbon copy of the singer, even though he closely mimics his voice and songs; rather, he strikes a balance where he meets Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny Cash and Austin Butler’s Elvis – and wisely avoids Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury. It balances faithful reproduction with a personal reinterpretation, following a single imperative in the singer’s words: to never be dull but to always catch everyone by surprise like an accident.