Dir: James Mangold | US Musical Drama 2024
“Well, I wake up every morning/Fold my hands and pray for rain/I’ve got a headful of ideas/That are driving me insane” – ‘Maggie’s Farm’, 1965
Bob Dylan has often said that in the early phase of his career, he didn’t so much write songs as pull them out of the air; it seemed to him that they were already somewhere out there, fully formed, waiting to be found, and all he had to do was write them down.
It sounds a bit fantastical, but maybe that’s how an artist with an indisputable vocation feels when they’re in the grip of the first fine careless rapture. James Mangold’s excellent and engrossing film focuses on this period of Dylan’s life, giving us a compelling portrait of the artist when his creativity was at its most volcanic.
Some might object that the movie doesn’t explain how, exactly, you get to hitch this kind of ride in the first place, but you’d probably have to position your camera right inside the artist’s psyche to have any hope of doing that, and Dylan’s own ‘out of the air’ theory suggests that, even if it you could, maybe not all that much of significance would be revealed.
Timothée Chalamet convincingly embodies the restless turnover of personas which accompanied this early outpouring – every bit as headlong and chameleonic as that of Bowie, but less obviously theatrical. Impassive and vigilant, Chalamet’s Dylan seems to be soaking up everything while giving out very little: except, of course, in the form of the songs.
Cryptic as he appears, the film succeeds in giving us the sense that a lot of contradictory ideas are churning in Dylan’s mind at any given time, with no strong urge to resolve them. Just as he wants to maintain his relationship with Sylvie Russo, the bright spark of a girlfriend who helped awaken his political awareness, he craves a connection with Joan Baez, the glamorous princess of the folk movement.
Then, almost as soon as he’s forged an alliance with her, he wants to blast his way out by steering his music in directions which – again, paradoxically – are simultaneously more populist and far more esoteric than anyone else, especially in the folk scene, imagined possible. At the same time, he genuinely doesn’t see any real difference between blues, folk, R ‘n’ B, rock ‘n’ roll, country, symbolist poetry, and anything else that grabs him. It’s all self-expression, right?
The film thrives on these tensions as it builds towards the notorious 1965 Newport festival when Dylan’s unveiling of his electric music supposedly sent many die-hard folkies into terminal conniptions. While relishing the disruptive effect of his new style on some audience members, though, some part of him seems genuinely and hurt and baffled by the vengeful uproar they aroused to this day.
Dylan has said that when he arrived in New York, he wasn’t planning to become a folk singer. The scene he dropped into, while impeccably high-minded and historically important in a host of ways, also had its smothering and didactic side. White people weren’t supposed to sing the blues. People who drew their repertoire from life on the land shouldn’t sing whaling songs. Etc.
The folk movement was always on the look-out for ‘authentic voices’ to convey its social and political ideas to a wider public. As the movement’s de facto torch-bearer, Pete Seeger provided much of its drive and energy. Often unfairly dismissed as a gormless old fuddy-duddy, Edward Norton’s performance restores Seeger’s dignity, intelligence and benign energy. This was an admirably ethical man. But he felt that the primary function of art was to serve social and political goals. He could see the potential of the charismatic, hugely talented Dylan. And he wanted to mould him.
The young minstrel chafed against expectations he saw as staid and ossified. Which makes sense. When you’ve written “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” once, you may not feel like writing it over and over again, no matter how much Pete Seeger wants you to. Particularly if your muse is drawing you in ever wilder and more demanding directions.
The film ends as it begins, with the artist travelling alone to meet some as-yet unmapped future. Time has revealed Dylan’s political affiliations as inchoate and non-denominational, with songs like “Joey” and “Hurricane” suggesting that he was always more interested in weaving outsider myths than probing too deeply into the realities behind them.
This movie is obviously a labour of love in which everyone concerned is performing at peak levels. Along with committed performances, it renders set-pieces like street scenes in early 60s Greenwich Village and concerts at Carnegie Hall and in open countryside in thrillingly believable and visceral ways. It’s not easy to play recognisable people with high public profiles, but Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash more than justify their places alongside Chalamet, with Elle Fanning as a touching and feisty Sylvie Russo.
After a brief, brilliant, early blaze, a lot of poets quickly wink out of existence. Chatterton died at 17, Keats at 25. Rimbaud, one of Dylan’s key influences in his transition to more abstract and personal material, stopped writing at 19. Dylan Thomas, also clearly important to the young Robert Zimmerman in a variety of ways, managed to stumble on into his late 30s.
Many have said that even if Dylan had been killed in the famous motorbike crash of 1966, when he was 25 (which the timeline of A Complete Unknown doesn’t quite reach), he’d already created a body of work of towering cultural significance. But, at 83, Dylan continues to perform and record, his career now edging towards an astonishing 65 years.
Possibly the mixture of hard-bitten, cynical opportunist and sensitive, idealistic romantic – along with a good few other things – goes some way towards explaining this longevity. And, quite possibly, Dylan is just as surprised about it as everyone else. Ian Long
IN UK CINEMAS FROM 17 January 2025