You’ve really got to hand it to director James Mangold – he knows how to direct the heck out of a big-screen biopic. After making one of the classic biopics of the 2000s, Walk the Line, which brought Johnny Cash’s tumultuous life to the big screen, he’s back with A Complete Unknown. This one charts the first seven years of Bob Dylan’s career, from his early days as a protege of folk singer Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) and climaxing in his controversial decision to go “electric”, the movie is earning early raves for star Timothee Chalamet’s performance as Dylan.
In fact, Dylan himself recently took to X to promote the film, writing, “There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!). Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me. The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book.”
While it sounds like Dylan hasn’t actually seen the film yet, I was lucky enough to get a very early look at the film last night, and found myself utterly immersed in this biopic, with Chalamet just as good as everyone says he is. I’ll post my full review when the embargo breaks next week, but it’s up there with The Brutalist and Nosferatu as one of my favourite movies of the year. It even functions as a quasi-sequel to Walk the Line, with Cash a supporting player in the film, with Boyd Holbrook filling in for Joaquin Phoenix.
A Complete Unknown opens on Christmas Day!
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