As a self-proclaimed Dylan (and Baez) fan, though some of the pretentious men I’ve dated might disagree, I’ll confess I was apprehensive going into the BFI premiere of A Complete Unknown. Aside from the fact that I often feel movie biopics speak to a lack of creativity that is whirling around film as we sit through yet another remake, it didn’t help that Timothée Chalamet was starring in it - Wonka wasn’t exactly a beacon of hope. A promo clip of Chalamet and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) singing one of my favourite Dylan songs, ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, did sway me somewhat. Yet, I’ll admit I would rather have found issues with A Complete Unknown than enjoyed it. Fortunately, I was proved wrong.

Chalamet enters A Complete Unknown in much the same way Dylan must have emerged into New York in 1961, and subsequently the folk revival movement. Spontaneously generating as if from nowhere, the film’s opening scenes cement Chalamet’s Dylan as a wanderer above anything else - the first shot rests on the curly, black mess of hair at the back of Chalamet’s head in a taxi to New York, where he is facing out the wrong way. Obviously.

“The film expertly decodes the fine, delicate lines of youth and age”

The film broadly focuses on Dylan’s rise to fame and his switch in the mid-60s from acoustic to electric, culminating in an almost biblical performance (for all the wrong reasons) from Dylan at his third Newport Folk Festival. Refreshingly, the film has little, if any backstory on Dylan - we are never subject to a hybrid Chalamet/Dylan child lookalike; we never see Dylan’s first experience of folk, nor do we experience any of his formative experiences. We are merely present for a moment, where the other characters are just as distant and removed from Dylan’s interior life as we are. This kind of masterful distance director James Mangold creates might upset viewers who were looking for a Lurhmann’s Elvis-esque cradle to tomb biopic, yet I think Mangold’s vision is far more respectful, and perhaps the closest thing Dylan himself might have wanted to a film about his own life (evident when you find out he read, edited and approved of the script himself). Rather than attempting to understand Dylan completely and portray his entire life in high definition, Mangold uses the film to make a wider comment about the ethics of placing a movement on the shoulders of a single person who is bound to change and evolve like any other musician. Chalamet’s Dylan struggles with the unwanted weight of leading the folk revival, kicking back against the gentle but square panderings of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), his former mentor. The film expertly decodes the fine, delicate lines of youth and age, and Chalamet is beautifully aware of this. Before the film played at the BFI, Chalamet, Norton and Barbaro stood in front of the screen, and spoke a few words each on the film. Yet after watching it, it was Chalamet’s words which rang in my head the loudest; his excitement at seeing so many ‘young faces’ in the crowd emblematic of the importance the film places on change, evolution and youth.

“Chalamet’s performance as Dylan is outstanding”

Mangold must have been aware that the performances in’A Complete Unknown had to be standout, or else cries of ‘Judas! ’ might start appearing not only in the film, but from Dylan’s loyal fanbase (though they probably still will). And thankfully, the actors do not disappoint. Barbaro’s Baez is graceful yet powerful, and Norton’s Seeger treads the line masterfully between being a boring old man and a sage mentor. Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo is sensible and gentle, if a little forgettable, and for me it was Will Harrison’s Bob Neuwirth who stuck out as one of the more memorable and charismatic supporting characters. Chalamet’s performance as Dylan is outstanding; hypnotic, charming, witty, insufferable, and yet utterly, beautifully unknowable. It’s clear that Chalamet had completely immersed himself into Dylan’s character. He’s an asshole, as noted by both Baez and Russo. He’s inconsiderate, he’s a cheat, he’s pretentious and full of himself. But he’s also deeply fascinating, amusing. He’s a real musician, a real shapeshifter. The vocals from both Chalamet and Barbaro are almost perfect; there are moments where Chalamet’s ‘Dylan voice’ veers into the comical, but his charm pulls him back.

My one gripe with the film (hear me out) is its presentation of women. I’m aware that portrayals of women in the 60s will always have to contend with sexism and unequal treatment in the industry, however I was disappointed by the film’s treatment of Baez’s storyline. Mangold sets up a few interesting premises for her character; in her first scene, she refuses her manager’s requests to meet with label heads from Columbia records, and an interesting friction emerges between her and Dylan when he insinuates that she can’t write as well as him. Yet these threads unfortunately lead nowhere, and by the end of the film Baez is just another character who reacts to Dylan’s electric switch with little to no resolution of the aforementioned storylines.

Watch A Complete Unknown. Even if you’re a diehard Dylan fan who thinks of any portrayal of him as sacrilege, it’ll at least be worth the time to know why you hate it. And honestly, the film is barely a biopic about Dylan, which is what I loved about it. It’s not intrusive, it’s not a character study. It felt like one of Pete Seeger’s many kernels of wisdom dotted about in the film, about how a really good song can be stripped down to just the bones. A Complete Unknown can be stripped down to simply, a really, really good story.