
There’s a version of Bob Dylan for everyone: small-town boy from Duluth, Minnesota; scrappy folk troubadour of Greenwich Village; electric rock poet who defied expectations at Newport; introspective born-again Christian; Nobel Laureate. As any journalist who has interviewed him will attest, Dylan is an enigma. Capturing the whole man is harder than making a bead of mercury sit still in one’s palm.
In the latest Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold sidesteps this difficulty by narrating only the first four years of Dylan’s career, which culminate in his first major reinvention. Timothée Chalamet stars as a believable Dylan, and the drama that unfolds between him and Sylvie Russo (based on his real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo, played by Elle Fanning), Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) successfully establishes the pattern and tone of Dylan’s subsequent life.
The movie opens in 1961, with a nineteen-year-old Dylan arriving in Greenwich Village to seek out his idol, Woody Guthrie. The streets hum with music, students, and academics. Inside Kettle of Fish, a popular MacDougal Street bar, he learns Guthrie is back in New Jersey, dying from Huntington’s disease in a psychiatric hospital. When he finally gets to the hospital, he finds Pete Seeger, another folk music fixture, singing by Guthrie’s bedside.
Guthrie notices Dylan’s guitar and urges him to play. Dylan sings “Song to Woody,” which opens with the poignant line, “I’m out here a thousand miles from my home.” Guthrie had inspired Dylan to embrace folk music, and the song exudes his admiration: “I’m a-singin’ you this song, but I can’t sing enough / ‘Cause there’s not many men that done the things that you’ve done.” Blown away by Dylan’s talent, Seeger decides to mentor the young musician.
This scene foreshadows the central conflict of the movie: Dylan’s struggle to forge his own path in a folk music scene growing moribund in its resistance to change. Dylan emerged in the shadow of folk legends who built their careers with powerful lyrics and a guitar. For them, it wasn’t about showmanship; it was about using music as a tool for social change. Pete Seeger captures the essence of this traditionalist mindset, saying to Dylan, “A really good song can get it done without the frills.” As if to underscore the genre’s traditionalism, Dylan’s producers insist his first album, Bob Dylan, be a compilation of cover songs featuring only two originals (including “Song to Woody”). In an early scene, Russo asks him, “Are some of the songs you played today on your record?” “Nah,” says Dylan, “It’s mostly standards. Traditional stuff. Folk songs are supposed to stand the test of time. They say no one wants to hear what some kid wrote last month.”
The early Dylan fulfills with aplomb Seeger’s vision of “folk music reading everybody.” Songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” captured the social issues of the day (the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War) and reflect the influence of his communist girlfriend. In the film, Dylan meets Russo at a concert after Seeger orchestrates his entree into the New York folk scene. She catalyzes Dylan’s social consciousness and hunger for innovation. In a pivotal scene, she says of folk music: “It’s not all about the Dust Bowl or Johnny Appleseed anymore.”
The second half of the film takes place in 1965, a shot of Dylan walking New York’s nighttime streets marking the transition. Dylan no longer wears the clothes of a small-town boy from Duluth—instead, he’s dressed entirely in black. Although Dylan’s persona is transforming, he observes in an exchange with Russo that people can change what they do or how they express themselves without fundamentally changing who they are.
To further emphasize this shift, the film cuts to a scene with a TV title sequence. Pete Seeger appears on the screen, singing “Oh, Had I A Golden Thread” and playing his banjo as the title credits for Rainbow Quest by Pete Seeger roll. The contrast is striking: The colorful, almost childlike energy of Seeger feels like a relic of a bygone era when juxtaposed with Dylan’s somber, all-black figure. The times are changing, and Dylan is departing from the folk traditions Seeger represents.
“Can songs really change things, Bob?” asks a reporter. “They change keys,” says Dylan. It’s a wry answer, but despite entering a new era of his career marked by relational drama and instrumental innovation, Dylan is still a folk musician at heart, writing for social change. “Like a Rolling Stone” offers a glimpse of what he was wrestling with: “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose / You’re invisible now, you’ve got no secrets to conceal.” Guthrie and Seeger handed Dylan the keys to the folk music kingdom. But what will he do with the kingdom that he’s inherited?
1965 was a pivotal year for Dylan. When he pushes the boundaries of traditional folk, its representative, Seeger, feels betrayed. At the same time, Dylan is beset by romantic strife with Russo and Baez, whose company he alternates when he feels aimless and in need of an anchor. The pressure of carrying the torch of folk to the next generation, and his frustration over being misunderstood by his fans and friends, push Dylan into a creative period that culminates with Highway 61 Revisited.
Things come to a head at the Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan famously went electric, much to the dismay of his audience, who initially boo him and throw bottles at the stage. He opens his set with “Maggie’s Farm,” still very much a protest song in the folk tradition, only this time, Dylan is challenging the constraints of the genre itself. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” he sings. “Well, I try my best to be just like I am / But everybody wants you to be just like them.” Joe Boyd, the festival’s production manager, described the first note of “Maggie’s Farm” as “the loudest thing anybody had ever heard.”
The following morning, Dylan mounts his Triumph Tiger 100SS motorcycle and begins to ride away. He spots Seeger packing gear after the festival and pauses to watch him. In this moment, Dylan seems to reflect on those who paved the way for him, recognizing their significance but understanding he must continue on his own course. Dylan is, at heart, a wanderer. Seeger, in turn, watches Dylan ride off, realizing that Dylan represents the future of folk music—a future that will belong to everyone.
A Complete Unknown captures the essence of Dylan, but more importantly, it illustrates how Dylan bridged the old folk traditions of Guthrie and Seeger and the modern era. At eighty-three years old, Dylan remains a living connection to America’s rich folk heritage. Yet he did more than preserve that legacy—he transformed it. Dylan infused the social critique and poetic lyricism of Guthrie and Seeger with the energy of rock music.
Bob Dylan has lived the quintessential American dream: A small-town boy rises from obscurity to become a music icon. And not just any music; while American music had been shaken up by the British Invasion inaugurated by the Beatles, Dylan’s ever-evolving style embodied the protean character of his nation. His lasting appeal owes as much to his story’s ability to inspire as it does to the quality of the music itself. Mercurial and playfully enigmatic, Dylan is a ready cipher for other dreamers.
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