‘A Complete Unknown’ movie review: Timothée Chalamet is Bob Dylan in electric biopic

Bob Dylan’s early years in New York City are beautifully recreated in A Complete Unknown, which opens this weekend in Prague cinemas after earning eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. This evocative biopic from director and co-writer James Mangold (Walk the Line) doesn’t reinvent an especially well-worn genre, but its flavorful performances and dedication to the music make it a lot of fun to watch.

A Complete Unknown kicks off with Dylan (played by an Oscar-nominated Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York in 1961, eager to meet his hospitalized idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), to “catch a spark.” At Woody’s hospital room, he also runs into the kind and soft-spoken Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, also Oscar-nominated), who offers him a place to stay—and, after hearing him play for Woody, helps launch his career.

The story, largely based on Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, follows roughly four years of Dylan’s rise through the Greenwich Village folk scene. It includes his professional and personal entanglements with Queen of Folk Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and fictionalized girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), before culminating in his controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Mangold’s script (co-written with Jay Cocks) leans heavily into the familiar beats of a music biopic, and there are isolated moments here that feel inauthentic or over-dramatized. But when it sticks to the stage, A Complete Unknown is electric: it’s the energy of the performances and the commitment to the music that elevate the movie beyond its conventional structure.

Chalamet is terrific as Dylan, capturing his charisma, restless energy, and even his mannerisms and look. But because the musician himself is such an enigmatic figure, it’s hard to build much empathy for him as a character. What’s more intriguing is how the people around Dylan respond to him: when he tells Sylvie he used to work at a carnival, she’s charmed; when he spins the same tale to Baez, she immediately calls him out on his bullshit. The kind-hearted Seeger’s efforts to understand or appeal to Dylan form much of the film’s climactic tension.

As Baez, Barbaro steals the movie from Chalamet, delivering a fiery and layered performance that earned her a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Norton achieves the same as Seeger, bringing a gravitas and deeply authentic benevolence to his scenes. McNairy’s portrayal of Guthrie, though mostly silent, bookends the film with emotional depth that lingers long after the credits roll.

Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash, meanwhile, feels a little stiff compared to Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar-winning turn in Walk the Line; with Mangold behind the camera, both films feel like they came from the same cinematic universe of musical biopics. Fanning has little to work with as Sylvie, a fictionalized character based on the real-life Suze Rotolo, whose tumultuous relationship with Dylan never feels fully developed.

While A Complete Unknown isn’t a musical, Mangold devotes extended screen time to music, offering minutes-long performances not just from Dylan, but also from Seeger, Baez, Cash, and others. One of the film’s best moments features Dylan jamming with fictional bluesman Jesse Moffette on Seeger’s live TV show; Moffette is played with soulful energy by Big Bill Morganfield, son of blues legend Muddy Waters. The film’s musical high points, like Dylan’s stirring rendition of The Times They Are a-Changin’ performed after a Johnny Cash set, are pure pleasure to hear and see in the cinema.

The film stumbles, however, in its climactic depiction of Dylan’s electrified Newport Folk Festival set. Mangold dials up the tension to an artificial level, with angry audiences hurling objects and festival organizers scrambling to cut the sound. The over-the-top execution recalls The Blues Brothers performing Gimme Some Lovin’ at the honky-tonk or Marty McFly electrifying the Enchantment Under the Sea dance more than it resembles Dylan’s far more laid-back actual performance.

A Complete Unknown looks great, with Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography paired with Oscar-nominated costume design and sets that transport viewers to 1960s New York with stunning authenticity. Scenes of Chalamet’s Dylan touring Greenwich Village at night are gorgeously realized, and palpably authentic in a way the script struggles to match.

In a year of high-profile movie musicals like Wicked, Emilia Pérez, and Joker: Folie à Deux, A Complete Unknown stands apart as a soulful, music-driven character study with some incredible performances—both from the cast, and on the stage. While it doesn’t break new ground, Mangold’s passion for the material and Chalamet’s electric lead performance make this a must-see.