James Mangold’s excellent biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” chronicles Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) arrival in New York in 1961 and his burgeoning success to his electrifying performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
The film, adapted by from Elijah Wald’s book, “Dylan Goes Electric!” by Mangold and Jay Cocks, is full of musicians and musical performances. “A Complete Unknown” captures the heady days of the folk scene with affection but also a clear-eyed look at how the times, they are a-changin’.
"He is not trying to meet fashion in the moment, he is trying to chase a feather out in front of him somewhere."
Dylan first meets Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) when he visits an ailing Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in the hospital. Seeing Dylan’s promise, Seeger takes the 20-year-old singer-songwriter in and helps him with his career, getting him gigs at open mic nights and introducing him to Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and producer Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz). Dylan also gets romantically involved with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), before his career starts to take off.
When fame hits, Dylan retreats. How he navigates commerce and art as well as doing what is expected versus what he wants creates the film’s dramatic tension. Dylan, the film suggests, is a contrarian and a disrupter; it is not just that he boosted the appeal of folk music as its heyday was ending, but that he took the music, with its roots in blues and social justice to the next level with his performances.
Mangold is no stranger to the music biopic having helmed “Walk the Line” two decades ago. That film’s subject, Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), has a supporting role in “A Complete Unknown” and he champions Dylan's and his progressive efforts, even as the Folk Festival fears them.
The filmmaker spoke with Salon about Dylan’s music and making “A Complete Unknown.”
Watching your film, I saw Dylan as a disrupter. He is not always likable. He changes things his way and perhaps doesn’t care what other people think to a degree. What does Bob Dylan mean to you that you wanted to make this film?
I take those things you’ve observed and say, I don’t know that he doesn’t care what other people think, and I don’t know that he is only interested in disrupting. He has done an awful lot of constructive — there have to be limits to the disruptiveness if you are going to get anything done in the world . . .
And I am speaking generally here . . .
The words I gave to Elle’s character are that I do think he’s a contrarian, and I do think he likes to look at the other side. That’s part of the reason why he has gone through all of the changes that he has. He starts to get won over by another argument and chases that. He is a very deep thinker and very confident. He moves from one genre and framework to another with a kind of confidence that is really beautiful. There’s a level where he is ahead of us. He is not trying to meet fashion in the moment, he is trying to chase a feather out in front of him somewhere.
"I was absolutely disinterested in making a movie about the icon."
This may be really subjective and personal, but because I got to spend a good deal of time with him in person alone, I found him immensely likable and charming, but to be all the things nonetheless which we’ve seen all his life, which is challenging and playful. One thing I learned spending time with him — and tried to put in the screenplay — were the aspects where we perceive him as being disruptive, but it takes two immovable objects for there to be a kind of eruption of any kind. When Bob came to New York with his guitar, I don’t think he saw his future as necessarily being a solo folk act. I don’t think he knew what his future would be.
But as he articulated to me, as much as he worshiped Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers, he also worshipped Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash and Hank Williams and Little Richard, and a myriad of others. A lot of those people had bands and were playing in areas that purists, like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, who were more dogmatic about what real music is and is not. So, what’s more likable, the kind of person who says only my kind of music is real, and the rest is corrupt in some way? Is that more likeable, or is that kind of ludicrous on its own level? This is a level I really identify with him in my own modest way. I too have made my way making feature movies as really enjoying jumping from one kind of picture to another and testing myself in a way. I can see that you do that at some peril and with some cost for the way that frankly folks like yourself will write about me. It is so much harder to write about someone making a kind of intimate Bob Dylan movie after a gigantic Indiana Jones, after a racecar picture, and that following a film where I end the life of one of the most beloved superheroes of all time. How do you turn that into a compact editor-friendly narrative that makes a wry observation? It presents problems and challenges. It makes it harder to brand me and know what bin I would go in in the video store.
But that is an incredible allyship I feel with Bob. I love that recent song of his, “I Contain Multitudes.” It's an autobiographical and very direct statement that he feels there are so many artistic voices in him, and that he can bring his soul and creativity into each genre. You can see how this singular sensibility wrestles with another set of challenges. As opposed to the much more “easy reader” version, which is bringing the same sensibility to the same music and feeling stuck but giving your fans a known quantity they can eat and consume year in and year out.
I appreciate that, and the film I most identify you with is your debut, “Heavy,” which is a great little indie. I found just observing Dylan’s character revealed more than scenes telling me about him. Can you talk about your approach to telling his story and presenting Dylan, the icon?
I wasn’t interested in the icon. I was absolutely disinterested in making a movie about the icon. I was more interested about the kid and the transformation into what you call the icon or the Bob we know. Part of that challenge was to not get lost in the biopic-y — “this song was recorded at this time in this place. . .” There is a real lack of biographical data. I am really focused on this being just like a fiction film, although the scenes are accurate and historical. Letting you experience them as Bob experienced them, they weren’t historic events when they were happening. They were just a show or just singing in an apartment. The intimacy of that. Very often, when history is getting made, the participants don’t know that history is being made. They don’t all pose for a painting like the signing of the Declaration of Independence. They happen to make something amazing that they have no f**king idea is going to live as long as it does.
Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet in "A Complete Unknown" (Searchlight Pictures)The film features many scenes of songwriting and performances, to recording sessions, to major concerts. Can you talk about how you incorporated and presented the music in the film? The songs help tell the story.
What was so interesting to me was for the way we characterize Bob as “enigmatic and mysterious” — the words we see over and over again. What was interesting to me was as I took his early songs and arranged them in the timeline of the film and see them getting born in relation to the events around him, both political and cultural, but even more specifically to where he was at in his relationships and with the record company and his fans. The songs became much less oblique as you began to feel them in the face of his journey. His first song in the movie is called “Song for Woody,” and it is a song he wrote for Woody Guthrie, and he sings it in the movie to Woody Guthrie. It couldn’t be more straight ahead. His next song, where we see him in his first show at Gertie’s, he sings, “I was young when I left home,” and he was. His songs, “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” are commentaries about his relationships and less oblique than we actually give him credit for.
You shape the film through political messages. There are TV news segments like the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as personal politics, such as the letters between Johnny Cash and Dylan, that emphasize social change. What can you say about the narrative episodes you included and how you incorporated into the film?
"The songs became much less oblique as you began to feel them in the face of his journey."
I thought it was so interesting that “Masters of War” came out of him being alone. Sylvie had gone away on this art trip, and he was alone in this apartment during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The writing of potent, really political songs came about as a result of the instability that was happening at that moment. That relationship of the world and what Bob was writing about; his first instinct was not writing political songs at all. It came mostly from Sylvie and her concerns about civil rights etc. Even when he did write political songs, Bob never wades into the specifics other than “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” where he’s literally telling the story of some tragedy, he most often sings obliquely. “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,” which is kind of saying something and nothing at same time. That is part of the appeal of his music. No matter where you fall in terms of your politics, there is something about the way he pulls you into his story that make you open.
Can you describe how you presented the film visually? There are close-ups in the music scenes, but there Is also tension in your framing — especially in the scenes with Joan and Dylan. You feel the relationship tension with one in the background and one in the foreground the same shot.
It’s something I learned making “Walk the Line” — and it was the same DP [Phedon Papamichael] and I on that picture. We applied ourselves to this obvious idea that when you are shooting a stage, the logical access would be over the [performers] to the audience and from audience on to the performers at the mic. Those angles exist in the movie, but they are the minority. Almost all of the access is in line in the wings. The audience is visible obliquely off to the side or in raking shots. It’s about feeling really intimate with what it feels like to be someone on the stage. The frontal shots are shot intimately, about 8 to 10 inches away from the actors. The other thing that creates the visuals that you are fond of is the anamorphic framing which is so wide not tall, it allows me to put two heads in a frame and make it feel like two singles because they are so stacked and the rectangle is wide enough to hold two heads in a shot.
You frame the characters that makes viewers understand their relationship visually, even without dialogue . . .
They are playing this dance of gazes and glances that communicates so much underneath the song. You can’t shoot the song because of the drama; you learn this making action pictures. You can’t just shoot cars going around corners really fast. There has to be some kind of drama and character development going on at the same time. It’s no less different shooting a musical number. It isn’t just that they are singing, but what is going on while they are singing? That’s what makes it so interesting. How the show must go on and how they walked on stage after fighting with their girlfriend, or feeling this guilt or this weight upon them, and they have to press on through that. That makes the songs and the performance of them all the more richer.
Dylan’s relationship with both Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger are important to him. Why do you think he behaved the way he did with each man? He is caring towards one and practically betraying the other.
I do not think he betrays Pete Seeger. How? Was he supposed to be betrothed to him forever, and be a mantlepiece for folk music until his death? When did he get married? How could he betray him? He literally picked folk music up and made it gigantic. I don’t doubt that he disappointed Pete Seeger, but that’s different from betraying.
What observations do you have about Dylan’s relationship with the various women in his life? A love triangle of sorts develops between Dylan, Sylvie and Joan Baez, and it is complicated by his success. The film lets viewers observe and draw their conclusions about how his fame shaped those relationships. Your thoughts?
I was really conscious as we cast both actresses that I wanted very different energies. Elle is a deeply loving sweet person and there is a kind of kindness and understanding and an intellectual voraciousness to her that I felt that could play in Sylvie. That relationship exists before Bob became Bob. I felt in talking with Bob about that relationship that he really cherished it and still does. That relationship is pure and a first love. He grew up with her.
Monica Barbaro in "A Complete Unknown" (Searchlight Pictures)
She broke my heart.
"Historically, Joan was a conqueror romantically also, not just Bob."
Joan is more of a kind of equal and also a powerful attraction and connection but more of a mercenary herself. She is a showbiz professional in the world of folk. She is more seasoned than Bob when the movie begins and has her own set of issues. Bob is uniquely shlumpy and awkward and resistant to standard stage etiquette. And Joan is incredibly presentable and beautiful. She has an angelic voice, and Bob has this craggy kind of Blues man’s croak. Yet Joan doesn’t write songs very often, and Bob is this incredibly prolific songwriter at 19 years of age. They each have something the other admires, and there is even a slight air of competition between them. That doesn’t mean anything bad or good about the relationship; it just makes it entirely different than the one between him and Sylvie.
Joan gets the song from him because she knows it will be a ticket to success . . .
The song is a bit of a consolation prize because she says, “What is this?” – their relationship, and he says, “I don’t know,” and she moves on and thinks, "Maybe I can get the song." There is a level where I see her a little hurt beneath the bravado because he doesn’t go, “I’m yours forever,” and she is probably used to that. Historically, Joan was a conqueror romantically also, not just Bob.
What did you learn about Dylan making this film?
The sense that he wanted to make rock and roll and have a band from the beginning. The idea of being alone on stage all his life was not something he anticipated. The way that Pete [Seeger] saw making music, he respected. But he didn’t want to live that way, and never did. It was not something he agreed to in the beginning and changed his mind. We are pretty clear about that. In the first car ride, he is waxing poetic about Johnny Cash and Little Richard, and it makes Pete a little uncomfortable because he’s a purist.
The other things I learned from Bob were that even the implosion in Newport ‘65 was less a planned performance art implosion and more a Thanksgiving dinner awry among a family that is at the boiling point. That’s how I viewed it. All the cultural reverberations that came from that were assigned to it later, but it was motivated by the emotional family dynamic and that some of the children were outgrowing the parents. It was one of those Thanksgivings that ends up with someone driving off.
What is your favorite Dylan song? And are there any you never want to hear again!?
Can’t answer either. I’m just going to pass.
“A Complete Unknown” opens Dec. 25 in theaters nationwide
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