“All across the telegraph
His name it did resound
But no charge held against him
Could they prove
And there was no man around
Who could track or chain him down
He was never known
To make a foolish move”
(From “John Wesley Harding”, Bob Dylan)

“The truth is obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you’ll have to explode.”
(From “Where Are You Tonight”, Bob Dylan)

“Up on Housing Project Hill, it’s either fortune or fame, you must pick up one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim” (“From Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”, Bob Dylan)

The great Tom Waits, in an episode of “Storytellers”, tells us that he hates seeing a trailer for a movie where a deep voice leans in, informing us that the film is “BASED ON A TRUE STORY!”. Tom Waits asks the right question: “Does it really improve the film?” Of course not. Then again, really, what is a true story? And of course, a great story sometimes is the core of what becomes a great film.

What is a biopic? A dramatized film about the life of a real person? Or a dramatized film about a part of the life of a real person? Or a dramatized film of a part of a part of the life of a real person? Selected by the director of the film or of the person itself, or by someone that knew him/her or thought they did knew him/her, that loved him/her or hated him/her – that was present at import moments in the persons life, without really knowing the person in full, not knowing the story behind the curtain. You never do. What about a documentary about a real person? The whole truth and nothing but the truth? Of course not. Also a selection from a person’s life, well documented or not, maybe even with interviews with the person him- or herself. Maybe truthful, or maybe not. Maybe just including what the person wants included, maybe just including what the person remember. And – what about if the real person contains multitudes? Makes it even more difficult, I would guess. Either way, you have to choose which story you want to tell. Biopic or documentary – it’s about storytelling – and it’s about choices you make to tell that story.

Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese knew this when they put together the movie “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story” – the pseudo-documentary, partly fever dream, mixing both fiction and non-fiction, interviews with both real people that both existed and participated in the time of Rolling Thunder Revue, as well as actors playing the role of non-existing persons as if they were a dreamed part of the same revue. Making a point. Don’t believe all you are being told. Dylan didn’t remember either, or at least he told us: “It happened so long time ago, I wasn’t even born.” Making the same point. In this film he shouts: “People make up their past, they remember what they want. They forget the rest.”

Lists of what was true and what was not soon appear when films like this appears, as it does this time, too. But there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden. James Mangold knows that, too – but there are many stories to be told. “A Complete Unknown” is a story being told. The most important source for the film is Elijah Wald’s great book “Dylan goes Electric” from 2015, but it is obvious that the research goes both deep and wide also in other sources than this book, not least Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan studies when preparing for the role, but also the other actor’s hard work to to make their parts shine of authenticity. Then there is all the bits and pieces from that great jigsaw puzzle of a life more documented than almost any other artists life, in books, essays, photos, films, interviews, reviews, statistics, documentation of all kinds, at times day-by-day, stolen moments by stolen moments, always show-by-show, town-by-town, album-by-album, year-by-year. “A Complete Unknown”? Whaaat? People can of course argue about the title of this new movie, but the existential cry of “How does it feel, how does it feel, to be on your known, without no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone” of course contains so much more than a question about superficial biographical knowledge, the question is more about “how it does feel” to feel that way. I think it’s a perfect choice of title for the movie, as “No Direction Home” was perfect for Martin Scorsese’s film about almost the same period of Dylan’s career. An artist in a state of becoming, an artist busy being born. That’s the story of this movie, as I see it. Obviously digging for a deeper truth than just throwing “facts” our way. “The only thing we knew for sure about Bob Dylan is that his name wasn’t Bob Dylan.” Now let’s take it from there.

The producer Jerry Wexler told us in his autobiography that he worked with three geniuses through his life in music – Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin & Bob Dylan. Some company! More than anything else, “A Complete Unknown” is, as I see it, an attempt to tell a tale about how a genius kid from Minnesota affected the people he met, the audience, the artists, his heroes and sweethearts, as well as how he affected the musical world itself, while carrying a torch lit from a tradition and roots he never really forgot, electric guitar or not. We are introduced to stepping stones of all kinds in the young artists life, cherishing them as he finds them, leaving them behind when his destiny’s cynicism calls for him, even when it wasn’t just an easy way out, even when the risk of loosing hard-won popularity and friends lurked in the shadows.

This is the glasses I wear when I see the film. Yes, I’ve read most all of the books, I know the story, I know the timeline, the albums, the endless live project of this artist, attending a long string of shows, and I’m certainly not expecting to “learn” anything new. Neither I am interested in triumphant making a list of “flaws” or “errors” in the film. I’m trying to see the movie with an open mind, which of course is almost impossible – as we all bring ourselves, our history, personality and personal taste into the meeting with a new song or a new film. On a personal level, I wonder if it will touch my heart, if it makes me “feel” the story, makes me accept this storyteller’s hunt for a deeper truth, in a way a movie or a song or a poem or a novel can do at its best. If the acting and singing make me believe the story and the songs. If I’m trying to step up to another level, more of a critic’s point of view, I wonder if I will think this movie can succeed in reaching out to people, especially young people, especially people that don’t know this unique artist and his work from before, or maybe know, or know of, this artist, but don’t know this fascinating part of the story. And maybe some of them will start a further exploration on their own, like I and so many more did, finding gold at the end of the rainbow. Not totally unlike what Robert Zimmerman did when following the tracks of Woody Guthrie that winter of 1961.

Spoiler alert: For me “A Complete Unknown” succeeds on both levels.

Even if many of us know that Bob Dylan didn’t sing “Song To Woody” at his first meeting with his last idol, Woody Guthrie (“Woody Guthrie was my last idol/he was the last idol/because he was the first idol/I’d ever met/face t’ face), it doesn’t matter at all – it is a plain beautiful poetic touch from the director, as it is a great cinematic move early in the film, to compile the meeting of the young Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the performance of Dylan’s beautiful tribute to Woody. This is the real prologue – this is the fairy tale that’s going to be told. The times they were a-changin’.

The scene brought tears to my eyes, as the song and performance overwhelmed both Woody and Pete in this scene. Woody responded resolute in the only way he could, and when he later gives Bobby his printed business card, the torch is passed on to a new generation. The backside of the card reads “I Ain’t Dead Yet”, the same words later integrated into Bob Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings” (2012): “I Ain’t Dead Yet/My Bell Still Rings”. A coincidence? Maybe.

The casting of the film, in my opinion, is fabulous. Timothée Chalamet has worked many years to get a great grip of this challenging role, most impressing also as a singer, guitar and harmonica player. He owns it in a way that’s not a caricature or impersonation of Dylan, but from a humble understanding of the almost impossible task he’s given, bringing his own soul to the table in every performance, true to the task, balancing the powerful and cynical with the tender and humble in an exquisite way. He’s not Dylan, of course, but he is doing his part in a most convincing way. I saw Chalamet first time in the beautiful “Call Me By Your Name”, and it speaks volumes of this great actor that he masterfully can deliver such different characters in the way that he does. An Academy Award nomination seems most deserved.

Speaking of great actors, a long time favorite of mine, Edward Norton, nails the role of Pete Seeger to perfection – voice, singing, banjo, clothes, hair and appearance. A fabulous performance. Before I saw the movie, I was a bit surprised of Seeger getting such a big place in this story, but now seeing the full cinematic weight placed on this character’s shoulders, that of representing the whole shebang of the cultural environment Dylan enters into, as much he is the bridge between the old and the new in more than one way. We can see a glimpse of Dave Van Ronk, Bobby Neuwirth and some others, but this time and in this film the focus is mainly on the complete unknown’s rise to fame, and many important figures are left out to keep this focus, and to make lots of place for another main character, the songs, the lyrics and the music itself, developing at speed tempo during the film, for me making it feel shorter than its 140 minutes.

Elle Fanning makes a beautiful portrait of Dylan’s early muse and inspiration, Suze Rotolo, in the movie, after Dylan’s wish with her name changed, in the movie named Sylvie Russo – probably to pay respect to her memory, to the one who never chose to be a part of a public scene, and one who wanted to be much more than a muse. Like Seeger, this role takes the place of, or are used as a symbol for more than one person, especially the way the final break-up between Dylan and Sylvie are presented as coinciding with the Newport Folk Festival, connecting this break-up with Dylan’s break-up with the folk movement, but for different reasons. Heartbreaking moments of the movie, wonderfully acted, implying the cost of both love and fame and the difficult choices of life – for both of the persons involved. No one really expects a final solving of the enigma of Dylan, but the conflicting considerations in the artist’s life are splendidly weaved together in the last crescendos of the film.

Joan Baez is brought to life in the film by Monica Barbaro, an impressive achievement in so many ways, both musically and when it comes to acting out the drama between her and Dylan in a few greatly carved scenes – she already the Queen of Folk Music, he the unwashed phenomenon – two tremendous egos clashing at the crossroads of two different paths of life, in two different directions. Barbaro can’t sing like Joan Baez, but she works inside the limits of her own voice in a beautiful way, the duets are touching, and touches some of the magic the “real” couple once made come alive, due to the contrasts of both personalities and voices.

Bob Dylan as Johnny Cash’ protégé is well known, and Boyd Holbrook shows up a couple of times in the guise of Cash, both happy and wild, loving Bob’s albums and songs. Mangold told in several interviews about Dylan’s suggestion of including one role that obviously was pure fiction, certainly as he did to Martin Scorsese a few years ago. Mangold didn’t tell us which. A guess would be the fictional blues singer Jesse Mofette, here played by Big Bill Morganfield, son of the much more known McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters. In a clever way and in few minutes Dylan’s deep roots in the blues are acknowledged and integrated into this telling of the story, an important building brick pointing towards the artist arriving at the stage of Newport that epic night in 1965, Dylan then backed by Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

The way the film makes the early sixties come alive through use of both sound, interior, costumes and not least the city landscapes of old New York (filmed in Jersey City), and the remake of the stage and arena of the Newport Folk Festival, are masterful, before our eyes bringing it all back home to where it all started and where it all changed, bringing us all into the story like in a time capsule of how it all could have been, really making us see the story and the drama unfold, as we listen to the classic songs that changed the history of music, the history of songwriting, bookended by the few years from 1961 to 1965.

Dylan’s painful and reluctantly return to the stage in 1965, after the shocking effect of the electric guitar howling in “Maggie’s Farm” and for the first few songs, finally closing the set with the acoustic “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, underlines the brutal cost of artistic integrity, of challenging the system, to not just go with the flow, but to be true to yourself, to be true to art. Bob Dylan has climbed many a mountain in this regard, through the sixty years that has passed since the relatively short period of time focused in this film. He still continues to search, at any cost, even when I saw him in Royal Albert Hall, last November, still searching for new secrets to unfold both in new and old songs, still challenging us all to strike another match, and to go start anew, one more time, until the last curtain fall.

In 2017, in an interview with Bill Flanagan, Dylan was asked the following question: When you see footage of yourself performing 40 or 50 years ago, does it seem like a different person? What do you see? Dylan’s great and touching answer was “I see Nat King Cole, Nature Boy – a very strange enchanted boy, a terribly sophisticated performer, got a cross section of music in him, already postmodern. That’s a different person than who I am now.”

This is the person we now can see a glimpse of in “A Complete Unknown”.

“A Complete Unknown” is a great movie about Bob Dylan’s early years that forever will be a great companion to documentaries and recordings from the same period of time. It touched my heart, but even more gratifying is the film’s obvious opportunity to be an introduction for younger people than me to this very exciting story and extraordinary artist, above all to the great albums, the heartfelt performances, the beautiful songs and the fabulous lyrics.

NATURE BOY (song by Nat King Cole, lyrics: Eden Ahbez)
There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far
Over land and sea

A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
And while we spoken of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me

The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return

And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
And while we spoken of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return

Johnny Borgan