Unaccustomed as I am to writing movie reviews, let’s give it a shot and see where it lands.
I’ve been wanting to see “the Bob movie” since it opened in theaters on Christmas Day. We had every intention of seeing it the minute it came out – forget about Christmas dinner and all the razzamatazz and go see the Bob movie instead.
What seemed so easy in the planning failed in the execution. For reasons having to do with life getting in the way, no Bob movie materialized for us on December 25th, and there was no Bob movie for the next three weeks. But on the twenty-first day of Christmas (my true love gave to me…) the stars aligned, and last Tuesday, my friend and I stood in line to get our tickets. Not much of a line really, only eight of us in the theater for the 5 o’clock showing.
In any event, when I reached the front of the line, I asked of the concession stand person, “One for the Bob movie.” I’ve been calling it that for three weeks, and it just slipped out. She was quick to correct me: “A Complete Unknown.”
And that’s right where the movie starts, with Bob Dylan arriving in New York City for the first time, a complete unknown. Soon after, Bob visits an ailing Woody Guthrie in the hospital and, prompted for a song, sings Song for Woody. Pete Seeger is also there, and the two veterans both shed a tear, or if they didn’t, I sure did. Both recognized talent when they saw it, and welcomed him with open arms as the newest member of the flock, that flock of folk singers/activists hanging out in Greenwich Village. Bob fit right in, writing a new civil rights anthem seemingly every ten minutes (that would be movie minutes). Everything was working out fine for everyone right up until the folkies claimed him as their own when all he ever wanted to do was fly free. And we all know how that ended in 1965 when Bob went electric at the Newport Folk Festival.
From the day the 19-year-old Dylan arrived in New York until the day he plugged in in the summer of ’65 fills the screen for 141 minutes. Big kudos to director James Mangold (who directed Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic) for allowing Bob’s songs to be sung in their entirety instead of the snippets we usually get that leave us begging for more. No begging necessary here. And kudos to Timothée Chalamet for capturing Bob’s voice in spot-on fashion. The ensemble cast all sang their own songs – including Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and the talented Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. But it’s Bob we’ve come to hear, and Chalamet makes it seem so easy. Any fan of Bob’s would know it isn’t.
The cast of characters who spun in Bob’s orbit during those early years pop in and out of the movie – Albert Grossman, Alan Lomax, John Hammond, Brownie McGee, Bobby Neuwirth – but it’s Johnny Cash who steals the best scene in the movie. Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo gets my Oscar nod for her performance as the waiflike, naive, delightfully charming Suze Rotolo, Bob’s girlfriend. She sees him for what he is, and we understand her pain when she leaves Bob far more than we understand his. The movie never attempts to dig deep into what makes Bob Bob, what makes him tick. For those who see Bob as an enigma, “A Complete Unknown” will not dispel you of that notion.
The movie features plenty of scenes with Bob roaring down the road on his Triumph Bonneville T100, so much so that I anticipated the accident that was yet to come. But it wasn’t meant to happen in this movie. Maybe a sequel? Some music from Big Pink?
It’s hard to pick just one when it comes to Bob Dylan …