'A complete waste of your time': George Freeman reviews 'A Complete Unknown'

Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan | Image by: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

George Freeman MP

@MPGeorgeFreeman

What is it about Bob Dylan? Still writing and performing uncompromisingly fresh new music in his 83rd year – 64 years since he wandered into Greenwich Village, NYC, with a guitar on his back and electrified the 1960s US folk music and civil rights movement – Dylan continues to evolve. 

Consistently rejecting the urge of fans and the music industry to stereotype him, Dylan defies easy classification. Like his best songs, he consciously inhabits a mysterious netherworld of shifting shapes and cameo characters inspired by his fusion of US folklore, biblical Judaic imagery and Arthur Rimbaud-inspired magical realism. 

Like or loathe his nasal twang and 40-a-day Marlboro voice – whether in his early ‘pure’ folk period, armed only with a guitar and a mouth organ; his ‘electric folk’ period; his biblical rock; or the ageing Abrahamic-prophet voice of his latest American folk soul – music historians recognise his lyrical poetry and creative genius. (When awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016, Dylan predictably didn’t attend to collect it.)

For all these reasons, Dylan has consistently attracted the adulation of a certain type of thoughtful rebel – from Johnny Cash to a roll call of self-styled troubadours for new generations. (Including here in Parliament, where self-professed Dylanites range from peers John Bird, Andrew Adonis, Melvyn Bragg and David Cameron to Michael Gove, Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson. And me. And doubtless many more. An APPG for Bob Dylan, anyone?)

His life has been the subject of a number of bestselling books and films – most famously Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary, No Direction Home. 

This latest offer – A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold – is a biopic telling the story of the start of his career in the early 1960s, culminating in his controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. French-American actor Timothée Chalamet takes on the role of Dylan. The film’s publicists have hyped the soundtrack, which features Chalamet performing several of Dylan’s iconic songs.

As a Dylan lover, I leapt at the opportunity of a night in a comfy cinema seat with popcorn listening to a backlist of his greatest unknown bootleg tracks and discovering new insights into the mysteries of the great minstrel from the Midwest. 

After two and half hours of stylised pastiche, I was desperate to leave. Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan is excruciatingly self-indulgent. Think teenage rebel doing air guitar and acting out a shallow fantasy of Dylan the celebrity. Rather than exploring and casting a fresh light on Dylan’s creative genius, Chalamet (a co-producer) indulges the worst of the Dylan-Can-Do-No-Wrong fanboy cult. 

Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan is excruciating self-indulgent: think teenage rebel doing air guitar

While certainly no saint – and no doubt deliberately difficult to work with – instead of capturing or even exploring the enigma that is Dylan, Chalamet’s performance renders him one-dimensional, shallow, rude and dull. Inexplicably fawned on by a Joan Baez reduced by Monica Barbaro to a doe-eyed housewife fangirl, this was Dylan as Chalamet’s schoolboy fantasy. It felt like watching a spoilt and sulky teenager at a privileged sixth-form karaoke. 

The screenplay lacks depth, with clunky and predictable dialogue that made me wince. It fails to capture either the complexity of Dylan’s character or the cultural tensions in the civil rights movement caused by his refusal to conform to the stereotype of a folk revolutionary singing only Woody Guthrie-style ballads about Vietnam. Even the supporting performances of potentially colourful cameos were wooden. Scoot McNairy’s Guthrie was inexplicably dull, and Edward Norton made out the musical giant that was Pete Seeger to be little more than an irritatingly confused and out-of-his-depth festival administrator. 

Mangold’s direction lacks imagination, with too many stylised wannabe album-cover shots. A more authentic, grittier use of cinematography could have revealed fresh perspectives on the evolution of both American music and society. 

A Complete Unknown is to the biopic genre of film the equivalent of a lazily assembled “Greatest Hits” album with no coherent theme or message. 

Interested to learn why Dylan inspires so much interest? Save yourself a cinema ticket, order in some popcorn and enjoy Scorsese’s No Direction Home (available on Amazon Prime Video) or his Rolling Thunder Revue (Netflix). 

George Freeman is Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk

A Complete Unknown
Directed by: James Mangold
Venue: General cinema release

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