A Complete Unknown (2024, 4K UHD Blu-ray, Library Rental) Review

[SRW1000]

Studio:  Searchlight Pictures
Release Date:  4/1/2025
Rating:  R
Film Grade:  C

The Story:  Young Bobby Dylan hitchhikes his way across the country to visit Woody Guthrie at Greystone Park Hospital.  There he meets folk singer Pete Seeger, who invites Dylan over for a stay where they form a loose bond.  A bond that will change and stretch over time as Dylan forges his own musical path.

My Take:  The movie is an unexpectedly conventional for such an unconventional artist.  Much of it feels perfunctory.  Concert footage features the typical shots of acquaintances staring deeply at the performer from backstage, showing the viewer just how important this moment is.  Scenes flow across the years from location to location, often highlighting specific songs, while leaning on the supporting characters to propel the story.  In that, it remains true to its title, with the audience not discovering much more about Dylan than they already knew going into it.

Director James Mangold makes another return to the 1960s era that he featured for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiney and Ford v Ferrari and other titles.  As in those earlier movies, he has a good feel for the period that carries over to the sets, props, costumes, and TV footage.  He has a solid knack for recreating the feel and texture of that era.  One can almost smell the smokey clubs, dingy hospital, and grubby apartment complexes featured in so much of the movie.  There is a general feeling of authenticity around the locations that works to transport the audience back to that time.

The film doesn’t work as well with the characters, though.  While Timothée Chalamet garnered tons of accolades for his performance, including an Oscar nomination for Best Lead Actor, he never reached a point of embodying Bob Dylan for me.  While his voice hit some of the right notes when singing, the soulful feeling that Dylan put forth is never realized in those songs.  This is often a tough call for a movie, do you go with the original recordings or have the actor do his best imitation of them?  In this case, Mangold chose the latter, and for me it just put up a wall between the movie and Dylan’s actual work, one that never allowed me to connect to it in anything approaching the artist’s actual performances.  I’ll allow that this might just be my own perception of Chalamet, as I’ve had the same cold disconnect to his portrayal of Paul Atreides in the Dune movies. 

Acting from the other performers was strangely mixed.  Edward Norton does a fine job of portraying Pete Seeger, in voice and spirit, giving him a down-home, pleasant folky attitude that was bound to conflict with an evolving Dylan.  Monica Barbaro is equally impressive as a spirited Joan Baez, as she shows off a remarkably beautiful and affecting singing voice.  On the opposite end is Boyd Holbrook, with a bewildering performance of Johnny Cash, neither looking nor sounding like the musician to the point of being a distraction.  The movie is filled with an overabundance of other actors, creating the problem of their miniscule screen time not allowing them the chance to breathe and seem like anything other than dialog-delivering vehicles for the script writer.

Visuals:  While the movie was shot digitally, it was then transferred to Kodak film and then rescanned.  The result is something that looks like film, with easily noticeable grain.  That, mixed with the numerous dimly lit scenes and depressed color palette adds to the overall grimy and dull environments of the film.  There are also tons of lens flares and other artifacts that call attention to themselves throughout the movie.  If the goal was to emulate the feel an avant-garde, taste-of-life film from the 60s, they succeeded.  The rental disc did not come with a Blu-ray, so I wasn’t able to compare pictures.

Audio:  The Atmos soundtrack is nothing special.  Overheads are barely used, although I could find an instance of Dylan’s roaring motorcycle coming through in those top speakers as he takes off down a city street.  In one of the few non-urban outdoor scenes, birds could clearly be heard in the bed layer speakers, but not even a chirp from the tops speakers, so it failed my personal bird test.  There’s really not much here that couldn’t have been done with a standard 7.1 mix, since the rears are an important element here.

The real attraction is the music, and it sounded fine, if you don’t mind someone aping the originals.  Concert footage wasn’t as enveloping as other films, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, but Dylan wasn’t exactly playing at the same venues.  It was acceptable, but far from inspirational – I was really hoping to get at least one chill out of the music, but that never happened.  The film does add a touch of poignancy by using Woody Guthrie’s Dusty Old Dust as musical bookends.

Special Features:  Audio Commentary by James Mangold

Final Verdict:  It’s hard to imagine what Mangold’s motive was for making this movie.  He’s stated that he wasn’t looking to make “a Wikipedia entry,” and wasn’t concerned with sticking to the truth.  (Variety has an article discussing some of this here.    He also spent time discussing the movie with Dylan, with that influence making its way to the screen.  Given that perspective, what are we left with?  We’re presented with a series of events, ranging from real to fictitious, accompanied by a recreation of the music, coupled with real-life TV footage from those times.  It’s an odd combination that doesn’t seem to serve a purpose.

Dylan fans (me included) might find something interesting in there, but it won’t be insight, and it might just leave them with a deep desire to hear his actual work.  I’d go so far as to suggest spending the movie’s 142 minutes revisiting the artist’s music with fresh eyes will lead one to more insight than watching anything in this entry.  For non-Dylan fans, I didn’t see much to recommend it unless they really like Chalamet's work.  My wife, who tolerates Dylan's music, but would never seek it out, was left wondering what the plot was supposed to be.

I’ll give the movie a recommendation to the curious, but I’m left wondering if the impressive accolades the film received (eight Oscar nominations alone!) were due more to nostalgia for the era or, more likely, the legacy of the man rather than what was put on screen.

Inspirational Quote:  “Bob, track some mud on the carpet.”



My Review System:
JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup

[David Vaughn]

Thanks for the review. I haven't had a desire to watch this one and may not ever. I've never been a fan of Dylan's music. 

[SRW1000]

Thanks for the review. I haven't had a desire to watch this one and may not ever. I've never been a fan of Dylan's music.

I had high hopes for this one, thinking that Mangold could do for Dylan what he did for the Ford v. Ferrari story, but I never got that level of engagement out of it.

[AVSCraig]

I'm surprised at your review considering the RT scores ( A Complete Unknown | Rotten Tomatoes ) and the rave reviews a friend of ours gave it. I have not had a chance to watch it yet, so I'll chime in after I do. Note I have never been a fan of Dylan's music but that wouldn't stop me from enjoying the film - if I don't start thinking about the Dylan satire scenes in " Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story ". 

[bmoney]

Not a Dylan fan at all. But live biopics. This just was boring with zero direction. Not a good movie at all. 

[SRW1000]

I'm surprised at your review considering the RT scores ( A Complete Unknown | Rotten Tomatoes ) and the rave reviews a friend of ours gave it. I have not had a chance to watch it yet, so I'll chime in after I do. Note I have never been a fan of Dylan's music but that wouldn't stop me from enjoying the film - if I don't start thinking about the Dylan satire scenes in " Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story ".

I was surprised as well and fully expected to like it going into it. In fairness, I did give it a C, which is a passing grade, so it wasn't bad, just not as good as it should have been.

I did read some of the Rotton Tomatoes reviews from the top critics, and while they were overwhelmingly positive, they weren't all filled with fawning adulation.  I'd say a 3/5 or 3.5/5 roughly translates to the grade I gave it, and there are quite a few of those.

Speaking of Dewy Cox, this is what the critic for The Irish Times wrote:  "If you can endure Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo (a version of the late Suze Rotolo) watching Dylan sing It Ain’t Me Babe with Baez and weepily realise that, yes, it ain’t Sylvie, babe, then you can also endure the rest of the Walk Hard clunkiness."

And that was from a Fresh review.  (I lumped her performance in the "abundance of other actors" part of my review, never given a chance to develop into anything substantial.) There are caveats in many of those reviews, so they were less bothered with the flaws than I was. 

I'll be interested to read your thoughts on it.  It's likely that if Chalamet's performance works for you, you'll come away with a much higher rating.

[SRW1000]

Not a Dylan fan at all. But live biopics. This just was boring with zero direction. Not a good movie at all.

Agreed, it seemed aimless.

I am kinda shocked by the absence of Dylan fans on this site, though.  

[AVSCraig]

I was surprised as well and fully expected to like it going into it. In fairness, I did give it a C, which is a passing grade, so it wasn't bad, just not as good as it should have been.

I did read some of the Rotton Tomatoes reviews from the top critics, and while they were overwhelmingly positive, they weren't all filled with fawning adulation.  I'd say a 3/5 or 3.5/5 roughly translates to the grade I gave it, and there are quite a few of those.

Speaking of Dewy Cox, this is what the critic for The Irish Times wrote:  "If you can endure Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo (a version of the late Suze Rotolo) watching Dylan sing It Ain’t Me Babe with Baez and weepily realise that, yes, it ain’t Sylvie, babe, then you can also endure the rest of the Walk Hard clunkiness."

And that was from a Fresh review.  (I lumped her performance in the "abundance of other actors" part of my review, never given a chance to develop into anything substantial.) There are caveats in many of those reviews, so they were less bothered with the flaws than I was. 

I'll be interested to read your thoughts on it.  It's likely that if Chalamet's performance works for you, you'll come away with a much higher rating.

Finally had a chance to watch this with my wife and 2 friends last weekend. We all liked it quite a bit. The singing by Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro was impressive in our opinion. Note that I was never a Dylan fan. I was into acid rock - Pink Floyd ( pre " The Wall " ), Jimi Hendrix, early Frank Zappa and the Mother of Invention etc. However, this movie was a trip down memory lane, because unless you were deaf, I remember all of his songs being on the radio. Yes, road trips back in the 1970's and early '80's usually involved tuning into radio stations - even Wolfman jack on his "250,000-watt powerhouse XERF-AM" driving across the desert. Every song sparked a memory - since many of them became associated with events or Vietnam war protests of the time. I thought the picture looked great most of the time. The audio varied - definitely better during the musical numbers in the 2nd 1/2. I'll give it another watch with someone that hasn't seen it at some point.

I'd give it a B. Maybe a B+ due to the performances. It didn't answer all my questions about Dylan, but sometimes that's okay if it gets you to dig into the backstory online.