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I am not a fan of musical biopics; I hate them in almost every way.
So as something of a Bob Dylan fan I’ve been dreading A Complete Unknown, the new film from James Mangold, director of the Johnny Cash biopic I Walk The Line, starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan.
The Cash film showed both the bad and good of the genre: the clichéd “song creation” scene where a now famous new song miraculously comes together; Joachim Phoenix performing Johnny’s tunes with singing that was impressively convincing.
That is, until the end. The real Cash sang over the closing credits and you immediately realised everything you’d been missing. Truly special artists are truly special for a reason and, to quote Mark Twain, it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
Story telling
I also hate the constant inaccuracies in such films, there to “serve the story”. The worst was that dreadful Queen movie. I grew up with this sort of thing, back when it was The Glen Miller Story and every jazz musician looked like Jimmy Stewart. The problem is that people, as we know, believe misinformation. Perhaps the best approach is fantasy, the route of the Rocketman biopic.
So how is A Complete Unknown? It opens in NZ cinemas on January 23. Well, despite four or five cringeworthy moments, I really enjoyed it. What makes it work is the remove it keeps from Dylan, not trying to get inside his head but showing him in different lights, refracted through how others see him.
The tone is set early on when Joan Baez – an excellent Monica Barbaro, lacking only Joanie’s extraordinary vocal strength – says “You know Bob, you’re kind of an ***hole”. He replies “I guess”.
And that crops up repeatedly, Bob being “kind of an ***hole”, not particularly, as is traditional, because he’s suffering for his art, but just because. That’s important to what the film expresses best, which is the weird inexplicable existence of genius. Bob behaves just as Baez says but then he goes and writes Blowin' In The Wind, and Mr Tambourine Man. And so many, many more...
How are you meant to react to that?
Bad movie things?
The scene where Dylan and Baez get together is truly dreadful; the idea that everyone in the cast including a rabble-rousing Johnny Cash arrived at the climactic Newport Festival is a movie construct. And the first time Bob thinks of Like A Rolling Stone – yuk.
The good? Ed Norton is miraculous as Pete Seeger, embodying the folk establishment with dignity and also nailing those contradictory feelings towards a genius in your midst. Cash is drunk and fun, if largely a plot device. And Chalamet is fantastic. Five years of work paid off.
But even then, when you see film of the real Dylan, you realise that Chalamet is never as sharp, never as funny, never as absolutely electric as Bob was in those days. The lightning bug and the lightning.
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