By Ella Kozlowski
Features Editor
With a Nobel Prize for literature and having written over 500 songs, Bob Dylan has made a major impact in history with his music. With all of the awards and nominations, this musician is intimidating to make a single story about. Despite this, “A Complete Unknown” absolutely obliterates all expectations, with Timothee Chalamet playing young Dylan.
“A Complete Unknown” captures this journey as well as the difficulties of being a popular singer with pressure coming from all sides. The movie also discusses what it means to be the head of a movement, as Dylan’s songs were popular in the protests for the Vietnam War. The film is less about just the shining moments or his most popular songs, but instead truly encapsulates the wide variety of emotions Dylan experienced during his rise to fame.
According to America Magazine, “When Chalamet, who sang and played guitar on 40 songs that appear in this 121-minute film, howls out the second chorus to ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (from which the film title is taken), one can feel Dylan’s angst and the anger as he tries to break out of the mold his handlers, and his fans, have constructed for him.”
Many movies about musicians mention the difficulties with growth in the genre, as well as problems with higher ups, such as producers wanting the artist to not be true to themself. “A Complete Unknown” dives deeper into the nuances of performance and the true zero-to-hero story that Dylan went through.
He began as a college dropout, with barely anything more than a guitar, and went on to perform at the same rally where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The acting is what truly brought this film to life with Chalamet fully embodying Dylan and humanizing him in his expression of emotion as well as the complexity of relationships.
According to Vulture, “Instead of treating him like a protagonist, ‘A Complete Unknown’ approaches the musician like a force.”
Another strong factor is the number of full songs throughout the film that helps tell the story. There were around 20 full songs, and each one was integral to the plot. Each song served as its own expression of the complex emotions Dylan felt as he continued through his rise to fame.
According to Roger-Ebert.com, “It’s indicative of why Mangold’s film works overall; its effort to weave Dylan’s music into the fabric of the storytelling instead of just using it as a soundtrack.”
“A Complete Unknown” is a beautiful story full of incredible acting as well as a beautiful soundtrack. Both factors played a massive part in creating a slew of emotions for the viewer in a way that must be like the amount of complexity Dylan was facing during at the time. With eight Academy Award nominations, the movie is a must-see to understand how deserving it is of all the awards it may receive on March 2.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo Caption: While the movie depicts a younger Bob Dylan, he still performs at the age of 83.