While I watched the Bob Dylan biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ at the Picturehouse in Piccadilly, a couple of times tears misted my eyes.
This morning, I got mail from my friend Jim Arnold who, by chance, had seen the film that same night and, he too, welled up in tears.
Why?
I am really not sure. Perhaps those four defining years from when Bob Dylan arrived in New York in 1961 brought a sense to us all that a new world was busy being born and that Dylan, in a phrase he despised, was the voice of our generation?
Perhaps the music, so familiar to me over so many years, touched what Leonard Cohen designated a secret chord, a subconscious nostalgia, a memory of that time when the sand in the hour glass was full and is now running out – for Dylan, his and our generation, for us all.
The story: It’s 1961. Dylan aged 19 arrives in New York with a guitar case, a head full of ideas and a rare driving talent that fuses American music into a revolutionary force. He quickly grows out of the dated folk scene and its devotees and shocks the world when he plugs his guitar into an amplifier and plays rock and roll.
Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, and playing the guitar and harmonica like Dylan, is magnificent. Tipped for the best actor Oscar, he deserves it. There are close to perfection performances too from Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and a fiery Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.
This Machine Kills Fascists.
First on Bobby’s agenda when he arrives in New York is a visit to folk legend Woody Guthrie at Creedmore State Hospital. Dylan plays Woody’s anthem ‘This Land is Your Land’ and Woody, voiceless due to the complications of Huntington’s disease, punches the side table in applause. When we hear Dylan’s take on the same themes in ‘Song for Woody,’ we find the optimism of Guthrie’s ‘This land belongs to you and me’ undermined by a sense of doubt, a negativity:
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born
A Complete Unknown Message
Dylan may have made his audience in the early sixties feel optimistic, while he all the while was looking into a crystal ball and writing songs of doom and disaster: ‘Masters of War,’ ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’ – the surreal aftermath of World War III.
Dylan was seen as the saviour of folk music, its new herald, but he had other ideas. He admires Woody, the original hobo, a man whose guitar has a sign that reads: This machine kills fascists. But he doesn’t want to man soup kitchens and ride freight trains. He wants to emulate Little Richard. Dylan is a mystery, a shapeshifter. Folk is his stepping stone to rock and roll. For Dylan, even as a complete unknown, it was always about the words he writes and types and rewrites, the words with their secrets and insinuations, their subtlety and double meanings. The music is the device that ferries the message. Folk, country and western, jazz, rock. We started using the word fusion in music decades later, but fusion was always Dylan’s raison dêtre.
Bob Dylan
Chalamet in every scene conveys Dylan’s urgency, brilliance, arrogance, ambition. He is convincing, likeable, dynamic. Directed by James Mangold, co-written with Jay Cock, ‘A Complete Unknown’ captures the spirit of the times, the spirit of the man. Go and see it. Old Dylan fans will love it. New Dylan fans will be born. Like Mozart, Dylan has a front row seat in Music Heaven.
When I got home after seeing the movie and watched THE Dylan on some YouTube reels, it was suddenly obvious why Dylan captured a generation – including the Stones, Beatles, Kinks, the Who and every wannabe who picked up a guitar and scribbled some lines of lyrics on a notepad. Dylan has the uncanny gift of making you feel that he is singing to you, for you, that you alone are the audience, that the message, whatever it is, in whatever way you interpret it, has been constructed with you in mind.
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin’ falsely now
The hour’s getting late
I went to see A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. (the Bob Dylan film). I thought it was very good. Intriguing story angle, looking at Dylan’s early years, journey to success and a creative choice that upset the fans at the time. A strong cast (who do look similar to the real people) great 1960’s detail in ‘look’, costume and set design. Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan is very convincing.
However, I did feel the iconic image of the ‘Freewheelin’ album cover was dismissed. The director seemed to have forgotten how important the 12” album sleeve was. They moment of seeing the album in the shop, picking it up, taking it home, studying the image, looking for clues, reading the text – even the smell of the vinyl was intoxicating. And then the mechanics of putting it on the record player and applying the needle.
I also wish it emphasised the Subterranean Homesick Blues song. One of the most influential and original songs of its time.
It’s a film about a poet musician but sometimes lacks that poetical vision – the spirit of the poet?
A remarkable Oscar performance from Timothée Chalamet, who learned to play guitar and harmonica to carry the Dylan role. Those of us who lived through those years, learning the lyrics by heart, began a new awakening. Sitting in the darkened cinema we have to let a tear or two fall as we remember how those 60 years have flown by.
Absolutely wonderful take on the film. Already dying to see it, now more so.
Brilliant. I felt the same way.
Can’t wait to see it !!!
Cliff,
You nail it when you said, “Dylan has the uncanny gift of making you feel that he is singing to you, for you, that you alone are the audience, that the message, whatever it is, in whatever way you interpret it, has been constructed with you in mind.” From almost 50 years back, many of his songs I felt a connection; and when I hear those songs today I’m brought back to those times.
http://www.mudflapthehero.com
I’ll give it a watch. Not sure who speaks for my generation
Taylor Swift?
Knock it off man. Timmy was not THAT convincin’ !