Is Timothée Chalamet searching for Oscar gold with ‘A Complete Unknown’?
With the announcement of an upcoming biopic on Bob Dylan back in 2022, featuring Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, and Timothée Chalamet in another starring role following Dune: Part Two and Wonka, next month’s A Complete Unknown looks destined for box office success and likely to grab the Academy’s attention.
Focusing on the 1965 Newport Folk Festival controversy, director James Mangold and writer Jay Cocks are exploring well-covered territory. Wishing to confound expectations after having endeared himself to the Greenwich Village folk scene and inadvertently becoming a giant of the movement, Dylan embraced a more rock-oriented direction from that year’s Bringing It All Back Home, inciting fury from one-half of the crowd who wanted ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ over ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. Dylan’s “going electric” episode is a canonical chapter of popular music, let alone Dylan lore, and has endured as the defining moment of his tumultuous career.
Coming from a respectable biopic pedigree with Walk The Line and Ford v Ferrari, we can be certain that Mangold will deliver a glossy, award hoover across the festival season, but one look at its trailer triggers a suspicion that A Complete Unknown may pursue a safe and maudlin approach to a story that’s seriously in need of something new to say.
Chalamet’s performance is impressive enough, capturing Dylan’s nasal pitch perfectly and adopting his guarded charisma with studious attention. The problem is there’s a whiff of the ‘authorised’ about A Complete Unknown. Although Dylan’s not officially involved with the feature, by possibly following the example set by Straight Outta Compton, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Rocketman, there’s a risk A Complete Unknown follows suit and presents a film that plays it safe and pursues a hagiographical approach that ultimately brings nothing new to the well-chartered tale of the original vagabond.
Based on Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!, Cock’s adaptation looks set to focus on Dylan’s antagonistic clash with Newport Folk Festival co-founder Pete Seeger, a stalwart figure of the folk community in his own right, plus a civil rights advocate and blacklisted pinko during the McCarthy era. As a critic for Rolling Stone and writing collaborator on some of Martin Scorsese’s biggest hits, It’s Cock’s input that instils greater confidence, providing Chalamet and Norton with the fractious dialogue needed for their dynamic of complex tussle.
Over 50 music biopics have been nominated for an Academy Award over the years, including ten wins for ‘Best Picture’ and 11 for ‘Best Actor/Actress’. Coupled with a tsunami of artists given the silver screen treatment from Mötley Crüe to Amy Winehouse, Chalamet is certainly hedging his Oscar bets and picking up Dylan’s Stratocaster at the right time, his producing the picture too illustrates his desire to get the show on the road.
It’s not the first time Dylan has been depicted. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger all played him in the experimental biopic I’m Not There in 2007, Blanchett’s performance received high critical praise. Dylan was previously vocal about who he imagined could play him, wryly selecting Billy Dee Williams and Mickey Rooney as up for the challenge in his estimation.
The man himself has added further promotional gold to A Complete Unknown, plus offering an encouraging gesture to Chalamet on a recent X post: “Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.” Out on general release in January, the biopic could be the legendary folk rocker’s defining depiction.
However, it could also just as easily be a sanitised picture that proves to only display Chalamet’s chops in the easiest route to an Oscar at a pivotal point in the actor’s career. In short, ‘how could I ever be deemed a cutesy novelty when I can sound and look like the greatest artist of our times?’ With his performance already receiving a Golden Globes nomination and the film up for ‘Best Motion Picture – Drama’, is certainly seems to be working.
However, the deciding vote in terms of its long-term legacy beyond awards season will likely come down to the half a billion Bob Dylan fans wondering whether they’ll be faced with anything I’m Not There hasn’t already coolly imparted.
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