QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The year is 1961, and a complete unknown 20-year-old Bobby (played by babyfaced, 29-year-old French-American actor Timothée Chalamet) arrives in New York with a small suitcase and a guitar to hand. We know nothing about his birth place, his family and his past. His devotion to music, on the other hand, is immediately evident. He sets outs to meet his idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), a folk singer and songwriter stricken with a horrible disease that left him bedridden and barely able to talk. This is how he befriends fellow musician Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who helps to lift the quietly confident artist from obscurity.

The rest of this 140-minute biopic consists mostly of Dylan behind the microphone, often with a guitar attached to his hands and a harmonica mounted on his neck. He performs for friends, at the studio, and then finally for large crowds, firmly establishing himself a folk music household name. He composes songs for Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), of the same age as Dylan however having achieved fame much earlier. “She’s was on the cover of Time Magazine”, he’s informed. Her recognisable warble helps our protagonist to gain notoriety, and the two also become infatuated with one another. This attraction comes as a the disappointment to his partner Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a non-musical character loosely based on Bob Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo. A cocky, often inebriated and vaguely caricatural Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) is also a close friend, and a regular presence on stage.

The most remarkable aspect of A Complete Unknown is that Chalamet sang and played live on set approximately 40 songs. And he is extremely convincing. He deserves unequivocal praise for such feat, and indeed his Oscar nomination. On the other hand, the film’s constant focus on his delivery comes a price. The pace becomes monotonous, much like listening to a Bob Dylan album on repeat. Like a Rolling Stone, the song from which the movie title is taken (“How does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone”), is played three times. The story predictably wraps up with It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.

Our protagonist’s relationship to the two women (Joan and Sylvie) becomes entirely secondary and only hastily explored. These characters remain flat, devoid of depth, and Dylan is robbed of his most human qualities, and interpersonal connections. There is no chemistry between either Chalamet and Barbaro, or Chalamet and Fanning. This is unaided by the character’s mostly nonchalant and blase attitude – a reflection of Dylan’s real-life personality -, and also by the fact the the leads are denied any sort of intimacy. The characters are almost entirely desexualised. There’s barely a kiss, skin contact, let alone lovemaking.

Another problem with A Complete Unknown is the lack of a distinct conflict. While most artists who have earned a biopic had a bumpy life, dogged by drug addiction, domestic abuse, untimely deaths, tragedies and controversies of all sorts, Dylan has enjoyed a mostly stable, uneventful existence. In fact, he’s still alive, and in relatively good mental and physical health at the age of 83. In A Complete Unknown, which focuses exclusively on his life between between 1961 and 1965, the biggest challenges that he has to face are a girlfriend jealous of his connection with Joan Baez, and a hostile audience at the Freeport Folk Festival (angered by his flirtations with rock’n roll). These events are portrayed without much vigour. A Complete Unknown is a movie as dispassionate as the facial expression of its protagonist. In many ways, this is a one-man-show, enjoyable on some levels yet with some major limitations.

There is an attempt to tie Dylan’s life with the most significant political events of the time, namely the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X. The title cards at the end reveal that Dylan’s work was intimately connected to social justice and the Civil Rights Movement. That you could hardly make out from the preceding two hours and 20 minutes.

A Complete Unknown showed in the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. The movie received eight nominations at the 97th Academy Awards, including Best Actor, Best Sound and Best Picture.