Making a biopic about a legendary figure like Bob Dylan is always going to be tricky because everyone knows something about him and some people know everything about him — at least it seems that way. 

James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown does not put forth minutiae about the singer-songwriter that will be new to hardcore fans, nor does it hit every bullet point of Dylan’s Wikipedia page. But it’s an immersive and intricately rendered look at the most important transitory period early in his 60-plus year music career. 

Those who don’t already get his appeal or enjoy his music should at least gain a sense of appreciation for his impact on rock history and why he matters to so many people. But along with his co-writer Jay Cocks, Mangold sets out first to make an engaging story about a young stranger who came out of nowhere and was everywhere in just a few short years.

Our story starts in 1961, with Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) hitchhiking with his guitar from Minnesota to New York City, where he hopes to meet his ailing idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in a nearby hospital. While paying him a visit, he finds Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) already beside and at their request, he plays them a song that enraptures both. 

Seeger introduces Dylan at clubs and coffeehouses throughout Greenwich Village, catching the attention of fellow folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and her manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler). After the release of his debut album in ’62 and its follow-up a year later, Dylan quickly becomes one of rock’s most vaunted troubadours, troubling to his girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning), who didn’t expect such a meteoric rush to fame.

The climax of A Complete Unknown centers on Dylan “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, a seminal decision that alienated acoustic purists but allowed him to venture onto new sonic pathways. 

Mangold doesn’t try to explain away why Dylan chose to bring a backing band to a folk-oriented fest. Instead, he paints a portrait of an iconoclast who values his musicianship above all else. 

Understandably, the spotlight is brightest on Chalamet here, and while it’s not a transcendent performance, he certainly does a believable job conveying Dylan’s raspy timbre and musical chops. I don’t think he peels back new layers of understanding behind the artist’s genius, but I don’t know that the movie needs him to either. 

“You can be beautiful or you can be ugly, but you can’t be plain,” Dylan says of performers at one point. Chalamet’s work does not fit into the “plain” category.

Like Dylan at Newport, Chalamet also has a talented ensemble backing him up in this musical endeavor. 

Norton has tended toward self-centered and arrogant characters more recently. So, it was a treat watching him melt into a character here who is much more soft-spoken and tender in his disposition. 

Fanning has something of a thankless role as “the girlfriend” or “the muse,” but she brings a grace and poise to the performance that make her moments stick out. 

The biggest find here, though, is Barbaro as Baez, whose angelic voice and delicate fingerpicking on stage did not always translate to submissiveness off-stage. As someone mired in a professional and personal relationship with Dylan, she has no problem standing her ground when his ego gets the best of him. Barbaro is magnetic and authentic as Baez the musician and Baez the person.

As he did with his thrilling sports biopic Ford v Ferrari in 2019, Mangold brings out all of the period elements of the 1960s without drawing too much attention to them. 

I expected A Complete Unknown to mirror Inside Llewyn Davis — still a much better film, even though it’s a fictionalization — but the look of the two movies is completely different. Where Bruno Delbonnel’s camerawork in Davis was meant to execute the warmth of cozy coffeehouses like The Gaslight Cafe, director of photography Phedon Papamichael’s camera frames the events with more tactility and grit by comparison. 

There have been numerous documentaries about Dylan, and given the era it focuses on, it’s fitting that A Complete Unknown is most visually analogous to Scorsese’s No Direction Home. 

Mangold wants us to feel like we were in the room when Dylan broke out. And if you’re in the mood to travel back in time like Mangold had Indiana Jones do in his Dial of Destiny last year, then you’ll want to get acquainted with A Complete Unknown.

New movies coming this weekend

• Opening in theaters is Sonic the Hedgehog 3, an action-adventure sequel starring Ben Schwartz and Jim Carrey following Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails as they reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow.
• Also playing only in theaters is Mufasa: The Lion King, a live action-styled prequel starring Aaron Pierre and Kelvin Harrison Jr., focusing on the future king of the Pride Lands.
• Streaming on Netflix is The Six Triple Eight, a war drama starring Kerry Washington and Ebony Obsidian, centering on the contributions of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black and all-female battalion, in World War II.