Movie Review: Bob Dylan Biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ Is Electric in More Ways than One

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)
This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)
TT
20

Movie Review: Bob Dylan Biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ Is Electric in More Ways than One

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)
This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

“A Complete Unknown” certainly lives up to its title. You are hardly closer to understanding the soul of Bob Dylan after watching more than two hours of this moody look at America's most enigmatic troubadour. But that's not the point of James Mangold's biopic: It's not who Dylan is but what he does to us.

Mangold — who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks — doesn't do a traditional cradle-to-the-near-grave treatment. He concentrates on the few crucial years between when Dylan arrived in New York in 1961 and when he blew the doors off the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 by adding a Fender Stratocaster.

That means we never learn anything about Dylan before he arrives in Manhattan's Greenwich Village with a guitar, a wool-lined bomber jacket, a fisherman's cap and ambition. And Dylan being Dylan, we just get scraps after that.

The world spins around him, this uber-cypher of American song. Women fall in love with him, musicians seek his orbit, fans demand his autograph, record executives fight over his signature. The Cuban Missile Crisis melds into the Kennedy assassination and the March on Washington. What does Dylan make of all this? The answer is blowing in the wind.

Any sane actor would run away from this assignment. Not Timothée Chalamet, and “A Complete Unknown” is his most ambitious work to date, asking him not only to play insecure-within-a-sneer but also to play and sing 40 songs in Dylan's unmistakable growl, complete with blustery harmonica.

The last big non-documentary attempt to understand Dylan was Todd Haynes' “I’m Not There,” which split the assignment among seven actors. Chalamet does it all, moving from callow, fresh-faced songsmith to arrogant, selfish New Yorker to jaded, staggering pop star to Angry Young Man. There are moments when Chalamet tilts his head down and looks at the world slyly, like Princess Diana. There are others when the resemblance is uncanny, but also moments when it is a tad forced. You cannot deny he's got the essence of Dylan down, though.

The movie's title is pulled from Dylan’s lyrics for “Like a Rolling Stone” and it's adapted from Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.” Dylan isn't a producer but did consult on the script.

It's not the most glowing profile, though the sheer brilliance of the songs — so many the movie might be deemed a musical — show Dylan's undeniable genius. Chalamet's Dylan is unfaithful, jealous and puckish. The movie suggests that adding electric guitar at Newport in '65 was less a brave stand for music’s evolution than a middle finger to anyone who dared put him in a box.

In some ways, “A Complete Unknown” uses some of the DNA from “I’m Not There.” The best clues to what's going on behind Dylan's shades are the refracted light from others, like Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and a girlfriend called Sylvie Russo, based on Dylan’s ex Suze Rotolo, who is pictured on 1963’s album cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

Edward Norton is a hangdog Seeger hoping to harness Dylan for the goodness of folk, astonished by his talent. Monica Barbaro is a revelation as Baez, Dylan's on-again-off-again paramour. Boyd Holbrook is a sharklike, disrupting Cash, with the movie's best line: “Make some noise, B.D. Track some mud on the carpet.” And Elle Fanning is captivating as Russo, the sweetheart sucked into this crazy rock drama.

It's Baez and Russo who dig the deepest into trying to find out who Dylan is. They don't buy his stories about learning from the carnival and call him on his facade-building. “I don't know you,” Russo says, calling him a “mysterious minstrel” and urging him to “Stop hiding.” Too late, sister.

Mangold — who directed the Cash biopic “Walk the Line” — is always good with music and clearly loves being in this world. There's one scene that initially puzzles — Dylan stops on the street to buy a toy whistle — and you wonder why the director has wasted our time. Then we see Dylan pull it out at the top of the recording of “Highway 61 Revisited” and suddenly it answers all those years of wondering what that crazy sound was.

There are points to quibble — Dylan never faced a shout of “Judas!” from an enraged folkie at Newport; that came a year later in Manchester — but “A Complete Unknown” is utterly fascinating, capturing a moment in time when songs had weight, when they could move the culture — even if the singer who made them was as puzzling as a rolling stone.



Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
TT
20

Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind “Jaws,” and had received nine Oscar nominations.

But Nicholson wasn’t feeling optimistic. In five years, he’d already been nominated five times. He’d also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn’t go through it again.

“I remember how hard I had to persuade Jack to come to the ceremony. He was so reluctant, but we got him there,” Douglas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And then of course we lost the first four awards. Jack was sitting right in front of me and sort of leaned back and said ’Oh, Mikey D, Mikey D, I told you, man.’ I just said, ‘Hang in there.’”

Douglas, of course, was right. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” would go on to sweep the “big five” — screenplay, director, actor, actress and picture — the first film to do so in 41 years, (“It Happened One Night,” in 1934) which only “The Silence of the Lambs” has done since. That night was one of many vindicating moments for a film that no one wanted to make or distribute that has quite literally stood the test of time.

“This is my first 50th anniversary,” Douglas said. “It’s the first movie I ever produced. To have a movie that’s so lasting, that people get a lot out of, it’s a wonderful feeling. It’s bringing back a lot of great memories.”

The film adaption of Ken Kesey’s countercultural novel was a defining moment for Douglas, a son of Hollywood who was stuck in television and got a lifeline to film when his father, Kirk Douglas, gave him the rights to the book, and many of the then-unknown cast like Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.

DeVito was actually the first person officially cast. Douglas, who’d known him for nearly 10 years, brought Forman to see him play Martini on stage.

“Miloš said, ‘Yes! Danny! Perfect! Cast!’” Douglas said in his best Czech accent. “It was a big moment for Danny. But I always knew how talented he was.”

A Joyful Shoot

Though the film's themes are challenging, unlike many of its New Hollywood contemporaries it wasn’t a tortured shoot by any stretch. They had their annoyances (like Forman refusing to show the cast dailies) and more serious trials (they found out halfway through production that William Redfield was dying of leukemia), but for the most part it was fun.

“We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey’s work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,” DeVito said, laughing.

Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn’t.

“There was full commitment,” Douglas said. “That comes when you don’t go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, ‘Jack, you OK?’ He said, ’Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It’s lunch time and they’re all acting the same way!'”

Not disproving Nicholson’s point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital.

“They wouldn’t let us,” DeVito said. “The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.”

A lasting legacy

The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It’s a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin.

“It’s a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,” Douglas said.

DeVito thinks it, “holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.”

Besides the shock of “holy Toledo, am I that old?” DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy.

One person Douglas thinks hasn’t gotten the proper attention for his contributions to “Cuckoo’s Nest” is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. His music company, Fantasy Records who had Creedence Clearwater Revival, funded the endeavor which started at a $1.6 million budget and ballooned to $4 million by the end. He was a gambler, Douglas said, and it paid off.

And whatever sour grapes might have existed between Douglas and his father, who played R.P. McMurphy on Broadway and dreamt of doing so on film, were perhaps over-exaggerated. It was ultimately important for their relationship.

“McMurphy is as good a part as any actor is going to get, and I’m now far enough in my career to understand maybe you have four, maybe five good parts, really great parts. I’m sure for dad that was one of them,” Douglas said.

“To not be able to see it through was probably disappointing on one side. On the other, the fact that his son did it and the picture turned out so good? Thank God the picture turned out. It would have been a disaster if it hadn’t.”

Douglas added: “It was a fairy tale from beginning to end. I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn’t really surpass that moment very early in my career.”