Review: "A Complete Unknown" Honors Its Title

Chalamet shines, but James Mangold's disjointed biopic leaves Bob Dylan in the dust.

February 3, 2025

In James Mangold’s new film A Complete Unknown, a biopic depicting the early stages of Bob Dylan’s career to his performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, a millennial will strangely think of the sixth Harry Potter film, the Half-Blood Prince.

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After Professor Albus Dumbledore takes the titular wizard through a memory of Potions professor Horace Slughorn, he informs him that the memory in question, where Slughorn excoriates a young Lord Voldemort for inquiring about the existence of Horcruxes, a magical item created through murder, “is the most important memory” they possess. However, it’s also a lie.

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When watching a biopic, remember that they are a collection of memories put into film. Depending on the filmmaker, they can get explored thoroughly enough to illuminate their subject. In those rare instances, a biopic can be more than a two-hour sit-down with a record player. Usually, they fail to transcend that simplicity because the person behind the camera doesn’t know what they want to do. Do they want to be honorific? Do they want to analyze, scrutinize, or humanize? Do they want to use them as the vessel to explain their impact?

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Without knowing the answer before shooting, the film is doomed. It may succeed in a few ways and amount to something generally good, but the film won’t have a purpose.

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Do all films need a purpose? In the extreme spiritual sense, no. Technically, all movies have a purpose, even if it’s not one“cinephiles” take seriously. However, biopics are predicated on the idea that their subject’s story needs telling, even though it’s a real-life story that, in many ways, is no different from ours. It’s the way they are different that demands telling, but convincing us of that is tough.

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By 1965, Dylan had established himself as a beloved folk singer. Although his “The Times They Are a-Changin’” album received a mixed response, the titular song became a counterculture anthem: Dylan was quickly labeled “the spokesman of a generation.” Fans adored him for capturing the times through a purely folk lens, and there was no telling how they’d respond to a sweeping musical change.

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So, when Dylan took to the stage at that year’s Newport Folk Festival, there was reasonable uncertainty. The crowd didn’t know what was coming so that uncertainty is largely retrospective, but it existed nonetheless. When “Like A Rolling Stone” kicked in, full electric band in tow, the music world would never be the same.

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In A Complete Unknown, this moment gets treated with typical biopic histrionics. Shot after shot of disgruntled concertgoers with ludicrously contorted faces hammer home the audience's searing disapproval. The boos build; objects get thrown onto the stage. People are furious. It’s the most critical memory Mangold collected as he sifted through the catalog of Dylan’s life: it is also a lie.

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It is not as egregious an alteration as Slughorn’s, but it displays everything wrong with A Complete Unknown. The crowd reaction was generally positive at best and firmly divided at worst. Folk purists were displeased, but the reasons for this are more varied than the film would have us believe. Yes, it was shocking for the audience to hear their beloved icon disavow his folk roots, but it was also frustrating that the set was much shorter than the accustomed 45 minutes and that the sound quality was poor. Audiences are diverse unless cultivated to be uniform. Yes, the festival was for folk music, but music, even when broken down into specific genres, means different things to different people.

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By giving such a narrow, cinematic perspective on such a watershed moment, A Complete Unknown dishonors Dylan. Timothée Chalamet is magnetic, and his subtlety during Dylan’s interpersonal moments and nonchalant approach to musical messaging layer his character far more than the limp screenplay, but it’s not enough.

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A Complete Unknown spends too much time existing that it forgets to truly live. It’s the difference between breathing and eating and genuinely living. You have to climb a mountain or swim a channel. At least get a hobby. If you spend your whole life trying to decide what to do, you’ll be lying on your deathbed while regretting doing nothing at all.

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Do we know Dylan’s work surged into the public consciousness during a tumultuous time in American history? Yes, because we all passed 8th grade. Did you know Dylan had a troubled, on-off affair with Joan Baez? Maybe, if you learned it somewhere sometime. Did you know “Like A Rolling Stone” was a big deal? Unless you’ve lived under a stone your entire life, yes.

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The sharper a biopic’s focus the better because they are about one person. Think of your life story and how you’d tell it. If you had a week, you’d take it. After all, you were born, what? Maybe 17, 32, 49, or 66 years ago? No matter how long you’ve lived, that’s a lot of life. That’s millions of steps and breaths taken, thousands of meals, and hundreds of experiences to cover. Now, imagine if you only had 140 minutes to tell it. What would you do?

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You’d think of the one thing that best summed up your life’s joy and ambition and explore it as fully as possible. If that was your marriage, you could tell it all, and we’d probably know everything there was to know about you.

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If A Complete Unknown treated Dylan similarly, funneling everything into that game-changing night in Newport, it could’ve been something special. It tries to do this but veers off in so many different directions that it fails. He has a girlfriend; he romances Baez. He records covers; he writes his own stuff. It’s all very surface-level and “been there, done that.” The typicality is generally humanizing, a reminder that we are dealing with a person first and foremost. Unfortunately, we still require that extra special something that makes us feel like this is a different kind of person, one we need to see and follow in a way that doesn’t make it feel like listening to their albums would have sufficed.

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Walking away, whatever Dylan’s dynamic with Sylvie, the woman he spends three years with as he rockets to stardom, says about his ability to experience true intimacy compared to his relationship with the lyrically saccharine and moderately challenging Baez is unclear. Sure, he clearly has trouble connecting enough to avoid playing accidental mind games but find a musician who isn’t like that.

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If Dylan’s music had a sincere impact, you wouldn’t know it from watching A Complete Unknown. The cultural heatwave gets underserved, so we’re left with some vague idea that folk people are territorial and Dylan’s new sound will probably make them unhappy. Why is that important? Why is it worth (somewhat) building to over an unnecessarily long 140 minutes? Mangold doesn’t know, so you’re best off reading about it.

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In fairness, the movie isn’t bad. At times, Chalamet and Monica Barbaro, shining as Baez, electrify the screen musically and interpersonally (not that those are mutually exclusive). Dylan’s best tracks, hand-picked to create the best possible perception of his artistry, create a generally compelling musical catalog. In the most overarching sense imaginable, it’s a very watchable movie, albeit one you don’t need to see again. You can’t quite define why it’s so watchable with so many glaring flaws dragging it down, but for some unquantifiable reason, it’s worth your time.

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However, that’s not enough to compensate for the wasted potential. Biopics are tricky, but we’re far enough along that people should be better at them by now. Hopefully, one day we’ll figure out the formula, and the genre will stabilize instead of being perpetually hit and miss, but until that time, we’ll have to settle for movies like this one that leave their subjects as complete unknowns.