You would think the Bob Dylan story would be 'wind-swept and interesting,' to quote Billy Connelly, however, despite A Complete Unknown being quite an engaging film, it feels like it missed the years that really shaped him as a song writer/performer.
The film starts in 1961, with a then unknown, 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York City with his guitar.
From there he forges relationships with musical icons on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking performance that reverberates around the world.
The problem being, according to this film, Dylan arrived in New York, for the most part, fully formed as a folk singer/song writer. In virtually no time he makes a very important connection that puts him on the trajectory of doing the work and becoming a name, before making his world changing performance.
While there is some drama behind the scenes with his various relationships, none of it is particularly unique to any number of up and coming musical performers. It's all very pedestrian. Yet still engaging and a fun time - probably thanks to Dylan's music which we hear throughout.
There are one or two scenes that elude to his life before New York that hint he may have been a 'Carney', either working or performing at carnivals, but it's never explored or fleshed out, making it seem like Dylan shouldn't really have enough life experiences to write some of the lyrics he did.
Like a Rolling Stone, the song that this movie takes its title from seems to suggest this may be true with lyrics like "Ah you never turned around to see the frowns, on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you". However it could all just be clever metaphors and analogies he crafted out of thin air.
Timothée Chalamet gives a pretty convincing performance as Dylan, even doing all his own singing. There's just not much here to warrant a bio pic that feels uniquely Dylan's story.
That said, it's still a very watchable movie that moves along at a steady pace, with Dylan's music tying it all together.
Worth a watch or two if you're a Bob Dylan fan for sure.
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).