A Film Review: LIKE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
by Pat Frickey
James Mangold, USA 2024
From the moment the baby-faced hitchhiker, Timothée Chalamet, hops out of the back of a station wagon on a litter-dotted 1961 Manhattan street, this young traveler carrying a guitar IS Bob Dylan. In many biopics, it takes a while for the actor portraying a celebrity to mesh into the famous person and emerge from behind the actor’s own persona. There isn’t even one hundredth of a second in which Chalamet isn’t Dylan, except for the undisputable fact that he is much better looking than Dylan ever was.
Nineteen-year-old songwriter Dylan has come to New York City searching for his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), the social activist and celebrated folksinger-songwriter who has been hospitalized. Guthrie, who wrote hundreds of songs including “This Land Is Your Land”, is suffering from the debilitating Huntington's disease. He has lost his ability to speak, much less sing. Dylan has written a song for him and has come from his home state, Minnesota, on a pilgrimage to sing it to him. By asking around in a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, Dylan discovers Guthrie is in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in nearby New Jersey. With guitar in hand and wearing his soon-to-be-iconic blue jeans, scarf, jacket, and billed cap, he finds his hero in this bleak institution lying in bed, helpless. Coincidentally, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), a close friend of Guthrie, is visiting him that day. Seeger, another social activist, folksinger, and prolific songwriter, who might be best known for “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, is delighted. Guthrie can only bang on his nightstand to show his appreciation of Dylan singing “Song to Woody” to him. Seeger is so impressed with Dylan, he takes him home to his wife and young children and becomes his mentor. The rest, as they say, is history.
LIKE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN follows the life of an awkward, mumbling, yet determined Bob Dylan’s first day in Manhattan in 1961, culminating with his high profile controversial electric rock-and-roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Two women are constants in Dylan’s life, Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro); they are never far away…when he needs them. Sylvie Russo is based on Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the time. Joan Baez is the legendary Queen of Folk Music, the singer-songwriter and activist who sang his songs; their very public tumultuous love life is tightly intertwined with the legend of the young Dylan.
LIKE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is an enchanting walk into the past, with musical accompaniment. The soundtrack is gloriously nostalgic, especially for those of us from a certain demographic. The first/last song that bookends the film is an actual recording of Guthrie hauntingly singing “So long it’s good to know you” from the chorus of “Dusty Old Dust.” There are over seventy songs in the film, with forty Bob Dylan hits, including “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and “Blowin' in the Wind.” Edward Norton (Seeger), Monica Barbaro (Baez), and Boyd Holbrook (Johnny Cash) perform their songs live, authentically, and movingly. The incredible Chalamet especially shines as Dylan—on guitar, on harmonica, sublimely singing live, in take after take. His dazzling performance is no fluke. Director James Mangold revealed that he and Chalamet had spent five years working on this movie together. It was well worth the wait.
