A Review of A Complete Unknown: Who is Bob Dylan? Seriously Who Is He?
I know nothing about Bob Dylan, and even after watching A Complete Unknown, I still know nothing about Bob Dylan. I think he'd like that.
Written By Michael "Mike Dynamo" Bridgett Jr
For those of us who know very little about this champion of folk music or his connection to Woody Guthrie, this film is an interesting experiment in watching what happens to a man when he becomes extremely famous much more quickly than he can handle. More importantly this movie doesn’t cover Bob Dylan’s entire life; just 1961 to 1965. None of that is bad, especially for such a completely unknown figure like Bob Dylan who has already had movies made about him before. Many people love this man and I think Bob Dylan would have preferred that people took this love down many, many notches.
I went into this movie cold. The only thing I knew about Bob Dylan was that he was a big shot in the 60s and that everyone has made a joke about "Dylan going electric". I didn’t understand that joke because I was an eighty’s baby. To me, it was like why wouldn’t you go electric? MC Hammer is electric. Prince is electric. Vanilla Ice is electric. I never understood that joke. Also, I knew a whole lot more about Woody Guthrie thanks to the one non-bastard episode of the podcast, Behind the Bastards. Robert Evans and Sophie do one of these at the end of every year, and this year they told the story of a great person or at least someone who learns from their racist or fascist mistakes like Mr. Guthrie. While the older folk music legend was in the hospital at the end of his life, Bob Dylan was one of the few people who made time to visit him confirmed in both the podcast and film.
A Complete Unknown starts off with Bob Dylan doing the very white guy 60s act of hitchhiking from New Jersey to New York City looking to visit his musical hero only to find out that Woody Guthrie is in a hospital in New Jersey. So he takes a cab, stiffs the driver, and finds Pete Seeger playing music for a fading Woodie Guthrie in his room at the sanitarium. This “complete unknown” walks into a room with two folk legends and is asked to play one of his songs and off we go.
WHAT IS A COMPLETE UNKNOWN ABOUT?
Bob Dylan. In the first half of the 60s.
Next question.
UM… DID YOU LIKE IT?
I did!
I don’t need to bring up the acting because Chalamet and Norton are always good and sometimes great. Monica Barbaro is great as Joan Baez. Eriko Hatsune is good as Pete Seeger’s wife Toshi. Elle Fanning is great as Bob Dylan’s girlfriend who immediately detects Bob Dylan’s cheating ass every time she catches a whiff of Joan Baez.
A Complete Unknown does an incredible job showing off the diversity in this era. This could’ve easily been the whitest movie ever made in a different director's hands, but A Complete Unknown has people of various ethnicities everywhere. Bob’s bandmates, party dates, and blues teachers are Black people. This movie also uses the big events of the 60s to pace itself while showing what the world was like back then. If you were curious about what Bob Dylan was up to during the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy’s assassination, and the sea change in how folk music was perceived, A Complete Unknown can give you a good idea. This film is a huge part of Bob Dylan’s life where he looks cool smoking cigarettes and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Don’t worry… smoking was considered healthy back then.
When questioned about his pre-New York life by a frustrated woman he's dating, Bob Dylan’s response is “People make up their own histories.” That’s when I understood that Bob Dylan speaks in platitudes and writes songs all the time. Dylan's talent was always in songwriting. He had so many song ideas he couldn't even sleep at night. Whether he’s at Pete Seeger’s house, juicing it up at Joan Baez’s place in LA, or hitching in the back of a family sedan, Bob Dylan writes songs as if he’s being assaulted by them. To make this fact more accurate, I’m typing this article on my phone in the dead of the morning. It makes me feel more like Bob Dylan.
THERE IS ONLY ONE DYLAN I KNOW ABOUT
Jakob Dylan, Bob's son, had a successful career during the 1990s. They were called The Wallflowers and created big songs like 6th Avenue Heartache and One Headlight. One thing you you have to understand about this outfit (which is now just Jakob Dylan) is that he writes songs just like his daddy with interesting breaks and all.
SHOULD I WATCH A COMPLETE UNKNOWN?
Honestly, this review likely didn't come out in time, but I’m glad for everyone who gave this a read. A Complete Unknown is better than other biopics because it covers a short period. Five years it's much easier to cover than 70. Plus this movie makes Johnny Cash look cooler than the Johnny Cash biopic did.
Bob Dylan has been at the songwriting game for so long that he's the only musician to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I wish I listened to more Bob Dylan as my music tastes expanded. This man wrote Blowing in the Wing, Like a Rolling Stone, and All Along the Watchtower made even MORE famous by Jimi Hendrix. In songwriting, Bob Dylan has been THAT GUY since long before I was even alive.
So yes... Go see it. It's fun, interesting, and gives you a good idea of how much fame sucks for Bob Dylan. In my opinion, that is the best part.
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