🎸In the pantheon of American music, few figures loom as large or as enigmatic as Bob Dylan. His journey from a Minnesota folk troubadour to a global icon who redefined popular music has been dissected in documentaries, books, and even an experimental film or two. However, there was not until A Complete Unknown a traditional Hollywood biopic that accurately represents Dylan.
A Complete Unknown, a 2024 film directed by James Mangold, focuses on Bob Dylan’s early career, featuring Timothée Chalamet as the renowned singer-songwriter. Released on December 25, 2024, this film presents a depiction of the cultural changes of the 1960s and features a performance that is receiving critical attention.
🎸The Plot: From Greenwich Village to Newport
A Complete Unknown focuses on five crucial years of Dylan’s life, from his arrival in New York City in 1961 at age 19 to his electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, the film—co-written by Mangold and Jay Cocks—charts Dylan’s meteoric rise within the Greenwich Village folk scene. We see him forge bonds with icons like Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), charm Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and navigate a tangled romance with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a character inspired by Dylan’s real-life muse Suze Rotolo.
The climax arrives when Dylan plugs in his electric guitar at Newport, a move that scandalized folk purists and cemented his status as a revolutionary. It’s a moment Mangold frames as a cultural earthquake. Less about the music itself and more about Dylan’s refusal to be boxed in. “It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, reinvents himself in New York, and then runs away when it all catches up again,” Mangold told Rolling Stone, summing up the film’s arc with Dylan’s own approval.
🎸Chalamet’s Transformation
At the core of A Complete Unknown is Timothée Chalamet, whose slender build and dynamic energy align perfectly with the young Bob Dylan. Chalamet does not merely mimic Dylan; he embodies his unpredictable spirit, capturing his nasal drawl and cool detachment. Remarkably, Chalamet performs 40 of Dylan’s songs live on set, insisting on this approach to avoid “an element of artifice.” Supported by vocal and movement coaches who worked with Austin Butler on Elvis, Chalamet dedicated years to preparation, delving into Dylan’s history, learning guitar and harmonica, and earning approval from Dylan himself. In December 2024, Dylan tweeted, “Timmy’s a brilliant actor. He’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”
The outcome is a raw and captivating performance, whether strumming “Song to Woody” in a hospital room or delivering a powerful rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” to an astonished audience. Chalamet’s portrayal earned him a Best Actor nomination at the 2025 Oscars, where the film garnered eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.
🎸A Stellar Ensemble
Director James Mangold, renowned for his work on music biopics such as Walk the Line (2005), presents A Complete Unknown as an ensemble piece, highlighting Bob Dylan’s influence on those around him. Edward Norton portrays Pete Seeger, a folk icon dazzled yet uneasy about Dylan’s ascent, shifting from warmth to feeling betrayed at Newport. Monica Barbaro captures Joan Baez’s joy during duets with Chalamet, as well as her sense of detachment—a reflection of Baez’s real-life sentiments. Elle Fanning’s character, Sylvie Russo, stands in for Suze Rotolo, offering a sensitive, external viewpoint on Dylan’s transformation.
Boyd Holbrook appears as Johnny Cash, encouraging Dylan to embrace his rebellious nature, echoing Mangold’s previous Cash biopic. The cast, which includes Dan Fogler as manager Albert Grossman and Scoot McNairy as ailing Woody Guthrie, vividly brings the 1960s folk scene to life with its smoky bars, earnest idealism, and underlying tension.
🎸Fact, Fiction, and Dylan’s Blessing
A Complete Unknown takes creative liberties with historical events, characteristic of biopics. For instance, Pete Seeger was not at Woody Guthrie’s bedside during Dylan’s initial visit, nor “The Times They Are A-Changin’” premiered at Newport in 1964, as we see in the film. While purists might object, Mangold maintains, “I did not feel obligated to adhere to a documentary level of accuracy,” as he stated to The Washington Post. Dylan, a master of self-mythologizing who once claimed he joined a carnival, concurs. He met with Mangold several times during the COVID-19 pandemic, annotating the script and providing insights without seeking control. “Bob appreciated my approach and recognized there was no hidden agenda,” Mangold shared with MOJO.
Despite timeline inaccuracies, the film encapsulates Dylan’s essence as a restless artist resisting the “voice of a generation” label. As Elijah Wald observed, “It’s full of things that didn’t happen, but it feels right.”
A Complete Unknown: A Cultural Snapshot
Beyond the man, A Complete Unknown is a love letter to a lost era when music carried the weight of social change. The folk scene’s clash with Dylan’s electric turn mirrors today’s tribal divides, a theme Mangold leans into. “It’s about intolerance for anyone who breaches the code, left or right,” he told The Guardian. Shot in New Jersey doubling as New York, with a gritty, lived-in aesthetic by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, the film pulses with the energy of a world on the brink.
A Complete Unknown doesn’t unravel Bob Dylan—no film could. Instead, it captures a moment when he outran his own myth, leaving us with a portrait that’s as elusive as the man himself. As Chalamet roars off on a motorcycle into the fade-to-black, you start wondering: Who was that masked man? Maybe that’s the point.
