By Randal C. Hill
With “A Complete Uknown,” director/screenwriter James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) has focused a white-hot spotlight on 28-year-old Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet, who not only sounds eerily like Bob Dylan but also effectively captures his personality—moody, demanding and aggressive. The stellar supporting cast includes Edward Norton, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro. (Here’s everything you need to know about Bob Dylan before seeing the film.)
Mangold’s movie brings alive the creative cauldron of early ‘60s Greenwich Village, at the time a thrumming area of New York City being fueled by the growth of folk music that was seeping into the mainstream. A new arrival called himself Bob Dylan, the name having been gleaned from the esteemed Irish poet Dylan Thomas. (At the time, Bob’s real last name was Zimmerman.) As a Hibbing, Minnesota, one-time wannabe rock ‘n’ roller, his Hibbing High classmates would remember him as a music nerd who sometimes sang at school talent shows while occasionally dodging tossed coins and lit firecrackers.
In January 1961, Bob left the University of Minnesota after a restless 18 months. By then, he had forsaken rock ‘n’ roll for folk music, as the latter “simply made more sense.” Woody Guthrie had become his new hero. (“He was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s greatest disciple.”) The aspiring performer adopted much of Woody’s persona and appearance before reinventing himself in Guthrie’s image. Zimmerman hitchhiked to the Big Apple to meet the legend and to begin his own music career.
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At Village clubs, Bob became known as a brash young artist who introduced original, unique lyrics that were often more dense poetry than the mere words of a song. Audiences accepted his distinctive nasal twang that one music critic said “sounded like singing sandpaper.” (Dylan smoked four packs of cigarettes a day.)
Mangold adroitly covers the ever-shifting phases of Bob’s early career, from that of unknown folk poet to international rock icon. Mangold’s title “A Complete Unknown” is derived from Dylan’s epochal favorite “Like a Rolling Stone:”
How does it feel
To be without a home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
The movie opens nationwide on Christmas Day.
