An Incomplete Unknown

What the new Dylan biopic gets right and wrong. . .

For a knockoff of the early Bob Dylan it will be hard to beat Timothée Chalamet’s performance in A Complete Unknown, now playing in theatres. From “Blowing in the Wind,” to “The Times They Are A-Changin,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and a lot more, this dude’s got it down. Veterans of those times might get a little misty on “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” his solo closing number at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival after he rocked it up on “Like a Rolling Stone” with the great Mike Bloomfield on guitar. There’s more to Dylan that viewers won’t see here, particularly his back story.

Viewers do learn that Bob’s actual name is Zimmerman, that he’s from Minnesota, and that he once played in a carnival. This information emerges during a quick flip through a photo album. Viewers can see that Dylan could be something of an asshole, a term he readily applies to others, particularly when record company bosses and folk music purists try to control him. Dylan’s difficulties with the ladies are also on display.

Joan Baez impersonators will have a hard time topping Monica Barbaro, whose voice, as Dylan says in one scene, is too pretty. In one of their duets, beautifully staged, they sing, “all I really want to do, is baby be friends with you.” For the music alone, A Complete Unknown is worth seeing, and veterans of the times can fill in other unknowns in the cast.

Mike Bloomfield (Eli Brown) played with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which had black members Jerome Arnold (bass) and Billie Davenport (drums). So the Chicago group was not, as one record boss says, a “white blues band.” To understand why Dylan wanted Bloomfield, check them out on “East West.” Keyboardist Al Kooper (Charlie Tanan) came up with the Blues Project. Check them out on “Two Trains Running,” and listen to Kooper, Bloomfield and Stephen Stills on “Super Session,” from 1968.

The real “unknown” in this movie is banjoist Pete Seeger (Ed Norton), portrayed as an innocent victim of gavel-thumping government inquisitors and a devotee of peace and social justice. Seeger was actually the strumming Stalinist, a Communist Party “artist in uniform” whose definition of peace was whatever the USSR wanted.

Dylan was indeed a devotee of Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy) but musically speaking he owes nothing to Seeger. Bob Dylan, an American original, carries on at 83, same age as Joan Baez. Once again, the times they are a-changin’, so keep on singing in the free world.