There is a telling line in A Complete Unknown that gave rise to a theory I have about the film pertaining to its main character, Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), being the villain.  At one point, he is in a hotel room with fellow folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and instead of paying attention to their illicit affair, he is playing music at an odd hour.  When she questions his timing, and he answers as if what he was doing is the most obvious thing a person could be doing, she accuses him of being (and pardon my French) “kind of an asshole.”  Such name calling wounds my Catholic heart, but then again, I am not Bob Dylan.  He made a god of his craft, whereas my Divinity is the One True God, Him born of Mary, and continuing to interact with this world through the power of the Holy Spirit.  One of the goals of this review will be to underscore just how much of a unrelatable character is Dylan, a musician whose music I have never enjoyed, particularly not his voice.  Hence, while this is better than the other Bob Dylan film I have seen, I’m Not There (2007), A Complete Unknown is pretty bad despite what other critics might say.

There was never a truer title for the beginning of A Complete Unknown.  Dylan comes to New York City in the back of a station wagon looking for the man behind the music he is listening to during the drive, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). The legendary American musician is in a hospital with a degenerative condition called Huntington’s Disease, which slowly debilitates a person’s ability to function in any meaningful way.  Once there, he interrupts a visit from another folk musician, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton).  Pete graciously invites in the young Dylan to play.  Dylan strums a tune that he wrote for Guthrie.  It lights up the sick man’s eyes and Seeger recognizes a prodigious talent in the newcomer.  From here, Seeger takes Dylan under his care and brings his junior counterpart to a gig in New York City.  Before Dylan goes on, he is preceded by Baez, with whom he is impressed.  She stays to listen to him, but the first person that captures his heart is Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning).  She meets Dylan at a radio concert and benefit to raise money for political activism, which is her field of expertise along with art.  They begin spending a lot of time together, and she encourages him to write and play his own music rather than cover other people’s songs.  As he is beginning to do this, she has to leave for six months to study art in Rome.  While she is gone, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurs, and it looks like much of New York City is in a panic as the citizens run around the streets looking for shelter from atomic bombs they believe will drop at any moment.  This includes Baez.  However, when she cannot get a taxi to stop for her, she walks past a bar where Dylan is playing and stops.  Thus begins their affair, though they have to wake up the following morning with a world not obliterated by nuclear warfare and living with the consequences of their actions.  That is perhaps too strong a phrase because Dylan mostly behaves as if nothing happens when Sylvie returns a few months later.  She, though, is wise to something going on, especially when his label asks him to go out on tour with Baez.  He travels to California and picks back up with Baez.  By this point, Dylan’s first album has been released and he has become one of the most famous musicians in the country.  It gets to the point where he cannot go anywhere without being recognized, underscored when he casually walks into a bar to hear Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison) play.  When people realize that he is sitting in the back, a pandemonium breaks out that forces him to leave but gets him punched in the face for his efforts.  The person he seeks out for comfort is Sylvie, but it is evident that there is someone else in the apartment with her.  Though you might think this would pave the way for him to be with Baez without need of hiding their relationship, their tour suggests otherwise.  At one of their concerts, they have an argument on stage over a song she wants to play but he does not, ending with him walking off without her.  For him, it is one more example of his distaste for people wanting to control him.  In response, he begins experimenting with electric music.  The record company is confused when he begins bringing in a full band to back him up, though they go with it because he is Bob Dylan.  People like his old friend and mentor Seeger notice that he might be going in a different direction than they expect, though Dylan remains cagey about what he is going to do.  On the eve of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan reconnects one last time with Sylvie, taking her with him on his motorcycle from New York to Rhode Island.  She is backstage with him when he is asked to play a duet with Baez.  Unaware of their falling out, watching them perform together is too much for her, and she leaves.  He catches up with her as she is trying to get on a ferry to return to the city and they have their goodbye.  That night, having received some encouragement from Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), Dylan goes before an audience expecting to hear all his old folksy favorites and does the unthinkable: he plays electrified music.  The crowd is in an uproar.  The festival’s organizer, Alan Lomax (Norbert Leo Butz), punches Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), trying to put a stop to it.  Even the retiring Seeger contemplates taking an axe to the chords before thinking better of it.  Instead, Dylan rushes through three songs and departs as quickly as possible.  Yet, he is prevailed upon to return to give them one last song by himself with just his acoustic guitar, and he obliges.  The final scene is of him playing a final time with Guthrie before departing.

Part of the reason I am not as positive about A Complete Unknown as other critics is because of that defiance at the Newport Folk Festival.  God certainly blessed Dylan with a great deal of talent, and the Church teaches that we should use those talents for the betterment of society.  Seeger sees this possibility in Dylan when at the first Newport Folk Festival at which Dylan plays, the up-and-coming musician performs “The Times They Are A-Changin’” for the first time.  One thing to keep in mind about the film is that it shows the characters responding to political events of the early 1960s.  We tend to think that recent years are unique for their insanity, but history shows us that this country and others have lived through equally wild epochs.  The period in the film, and the 1960s in general, certainly fit that description.  In the movie, there is the aforementioned Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to name a few.  When Seeger and the rest hear this song, they feel its spirit.  This notion is reflected earlier in the movie when Seeger is defending his freedom of speech when brought before a judge because of the content of his music.  He tells the prelate that “A good song can only do good.”  These words spoke to my Catholic heart, just as “The Times They Are A-Changin’” spoke to those at the festival in 1964.  Life can be scary sometimes, and when the happenings of the day do nothing to assuage our feelings of dread, God can send us something like music to let us know that everything is ultimately going to be okay.  Change happens.  That is Dylan at his best.  Most of the time he is at his worst, especially when in one scene he refers to himself as God.  Blasphemy aside, he treats music as his own domain rather than what it can do for humanity.  Perhaps my reading is wrong, but I had the impression of selfishness throughout, and that is decidedly not Christian behavior.

There is a fine line, though, when talking about Christian behavior in the context of A Complete Unknown.  Dylan is clearly following a calling, and this is something every Christian needs to discern.  What is it that God wants you to make of the blessing that is your life?  This is what the Church calls a vocation, and it can roughly be divided into three categories: married life, the priesthood, or religious orders.  There are some variations in those categories, but they are defined enough to be useful for our purposes.  To fulfill any one of them, it takes dedication, something Dylan undeniably has.  In one scene, he is described as a cross between a beatnik and a choir boy.  It makes sense in the flow of the film, but I think I have demonstrated that none of these labels work for Dylan.  I am confident that he would be comfortable with such an assessment.  What we can say is that he has the kind of determination that lends itself to a description like “choirboy,” which is sometimes used to describe somebody who is a do-gooder.  Such people do not compromise, though that is part of the problem.  God asks that we use our vocation to benefit others.  It is about making a sacrifice for a greater good.  A married person sacrifices for their spouse and family; a priest sacrifices for the sake of a parish, usually; and a person in religious life sacrifices for the Church and the whole world.  Their work is focused exteriorly, though the interior life is important.  For Dylan, his music was more for himself than anyone else.  This is why he remains elusive about his past.  It is undeniable that what he played moved people at different times.  It can also be said that he did not owe anyone anything for his efforts.  Sometimes, giving people “what they want” is not good.  What I am reacting to is Dylan’s disdain.  If he does not care whether people consume his songs, why write them or play them for an audience?  He says that he does not want to be what others want him to be.  He has no regard for their opinions, which is the behavior of a sociopath.  A true Christian sees things differently, with more compassion, but Dylan would probably not like that label, either.

It seems likely that those who made A Complete Unknown did not care about the direction of the plot.  There is one there, but it sort of rambles around as Dylan figures himself out.  What is of more value cinematically speaking are the performances, particularly seeing the actors play their instruments.  Otherwise, I did not care much for the characters, or the film.