Basement Vapes

Baby-boomer critics have spent the past week reliving halcyon memories and lauding the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. It turns out that critics born long after Bob Dylan exploded popular culture and released generation-defining music have their own takes on the film, which adopts an historical fiction approach to capturing the moment when the folkie plugged in and blasted ​“Like A Rolling Stone” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Gen Z and millennial critics from the Independent’s network of local arts reporting hubs agreed to see what the fuss was all about. They came back with the following divergent reviews.

A Bob Dylan Crash Course

By Nora Grace-Flood
Philadelphia

“Bob Dylan was definitely bad at sex.”
-The girl sitting in front of me in the theater

“Will make you grateful for the advent of autotune — and wishful that the directors had found a subversive way to incorporate that technology into the movie.”
-Richard Moldy

“An assault to history.”
-Every. Single. Dylanologist. On the planet probably?

“It makes Pete Seeger out to be a wimpy square when he was a badass and Dylan totally respected him. Albert Grossman never booked a Dylan Baez tour. SHE invited Bob out of admiration and love.”
-Your boomer dad 

“Timothee Chalamet is both listless and humorless.”
-More from your boomer dad

“Joan Baez was no super model… she was soulful.”
-Your boomer mom 

“A monumental must-see.”
-The outlet that didn’t watch it

“Lil’ Timmy Tim Chalamet is a cutie! And he can do a semi-consistent impression of the most widely impersonated man besides Elvis, to boot!”
-The Hivemind

“Willem Dafoe’s shoulder pads? Fucking fabulous.”
-The gay dudes coming out of the Nosferatu screening, which I wish I watched instead

“This movie blows harder than the wind.”
-Downtrodden Potatoes

“One middle finger does not a tempestuous relationship make.”
-Anyone who’s been in a relationship, I hope?

“Don’t go see this movie in theaters unless you’re prepared to stand up six times over two hours for your senile seat neighbors attached to the toilet.”
-Me, who made it through the whole movie just fine with an active UTI

“So long, been good to know you.”
-The person who killed themself after watching the Bob Dylan biopic because it was so bad

The Music Becomes Known

By Jamil Ragland
Hartford

A Complete Unknown barely feels like a movie in the traditional sense. Aside from a chronological structure that traces Bob Dylan’s (played by Timothée Chalamet) growth from 1961 through 1965, it’s difficult to see any kind of progression in the film. There are references to the momentous events of the day — the March on Washington, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of JFK and MLK — but these feel more like worn guideposts on a winding backroad than directions on a narrative highway.

Dylan’s own development is measured more by the woman he’s sleeping with at the time than any true understanding of his character or motivation. He begins with Sylvie Russo (played by Elle Fanning), but soon he’s bouncing between her and fellow singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) as his star rises in the folk music scene. He takes on their causes, but it’s never entirely clear why he does. Why does Dylan participate in the March on Washington, aside from the post-Civil Rights era perspective that it’s obviously the right thing to do? It clearly wasn’t obvious at the time, and the film spends scant time investigating Dylan’s moral and personal decision making. 

Yet none of this is a bad thing. A Complete Unknown doesn’t come across as a traditional biopic. In fact, the closest analogue I can think of to the movie is 2007’s Across the Universe, which similarly had no plot to speak of and instead served as an introductory point to a younger generation, myself included, for the Beatles’ music. I’ve heard about how important Bob Dylan is as an artist, but hadn’t heard much of his music. A Complete Unknown is a tour through a catalog of hits that more than make up for the shortcomings of the film as a piece of narrative.

Still, that also doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t succeed in other elements that are important in a movie, namely the actors. If it wasn’t already clear, Timothée Chalamet is one of the most talented young actors of the 21st century. He completely embodies Dylan, down to his mannerisms when he speaks, but also infuses the performance with an undeniable charisma that Dylan himself sometimes lacks. The fusion of Chalamet and Dylan makes for a much more robust performance in a film that is basically carried by his singular performance.

Edward Norton is also impressive as Pete Seeger. Norton has a long career, and his turn as Seeger stands out as one of the more unique roles he’s taken on. He plays the meek, kind-to-a-fault personality of Seeger without turning him into a coward or a punching bag. Seeger is secure in the man that he is, even if he’s not as exciting or dynamic as the people around him. It’s fun to see Norton in that kind of role, and showcases his own talents as a performer.

Dylan remains something of an unknown to me after watching this movie, but I’m now familiar with at least part of the body of work that has made him a music legend. I’d say that’s worth the price of admission.

The Kids Dispense With Illusions

By Alicia Chesser
Tulsa

I saw A Complete Unknown with four very young adults — ages 17, 18, 20, and 20 (three of them my children). These are kids with little patience for nostalgia, romanticism, or savior complexes. They’re under few illusions; they listen to Chat Pile. Only one of them knew much about Bob Dylan beyond the fact that there’s a museum in our hometown that has a lot of his stuff in it, some of which was used for research for the movie. Many people are still trying to figure out what exactly the Bob Dylan Center is doing here, other than that it makes some kind of sense for Bob’s own archive to be next door to a space dedicated to his early hero, Woody Guthrie. For me, even after reading Chronicles and knowing the story of Woody and Bob, seeing the moving scenes of them together in this film helped make that link less historical, more human. 

For the young ones I went with, two different links were most powerful. First, the one between the history of the time — the March on Washington, the Cuban Missile Crisis — and the music that died and was born in it. The music meant way more to them after getting it in context. And they loved the complexity of Pete Seeger, who could have come off as merely embarrassingly earnest if not for Ed Norton’s all-in presence. (Norton said on Colbert that he sees Bruce Springsteen as the singer/songwriter who has carried Seeger’s torch, which totally tracks.) They appreciated the message that it doesn’t take away from what past artists have accomplished and sacrificed when it’s clearly and urgently time for new voices to be heard. 

The second thing that hit them (according to my rigorous post-screening interviews): whether or not they walked away more interested in Dylan, they related to this vision of a very young man, who knew something of his own mind, trying to walk through the world as himself, whatever shape that needed to take. Being an asshole sometimes (the youngest: ​“I didn’t know he was … a cheater”). Being brave. Being embarrassing. They pretty quickly got lost in Timothée Chalamet’s version of Dylan, not caring if it was true to Dylan or to Chalamet, to that time or this. They saw a weird guy committing to this world, not some other world, and making his mark with the tool he had, not some other tool. 

A Complete Unknown is a fairly thin production, but the thinness — hanging its narrative hat on the songs and the aesthetic as it does — helps with its conjuring act. They did eyeroll a bit at the sing-along-ness of it all. Also at the several long shots of people’s awestruck faces hearing a Dylan song for the first time, that biopic trope of the light of someone’s genius gradually breaking over them, insisting you see that everything has changed with the advent of this sound. (Did anything of importance really change? Was the world more just, less violent, because of him? Do we honestly believe music does that anymore? Genuine questions from four kids looking over their generation’s current socio-economic-political edge.) 

Nobody quite asked for a Bob Dylan jukebox musical for Christmas. We got one, though, along with a press tour so chaotic that it bests the film itself in its faithfulness to the Dylan mystique. These kids were pleasantly surprised to feel elated after this movie. About 20 minutes in, I prepared myself to regret our purchase of a harmonica for the 17-year-old for Christmas (he asked for it) — then shrugged and smiled the next day as he taught himself to play it.

A Podcast, Perhaps?

By Sarah Bass
Oakland

Was this a musical? I think this was a musical.

Hollywood ​“heartthrob” (I am Not Team Timmy), clad in truly unconvincing vintage denim and spouting horrid hee-hee’s, plays the beloved but controversial indie-folk hero. He is an acceptable modernized avatar of a ghost of Dylan past; cleaned up but, don’t worry, still terribly cruel to women and cleverer than all who enter his orbit. 

The film is filled to the brim with heavy-handed jokes but not a single fleshed-out character. The songs, performed nicely enough by the cast, are just that — movie cast versions of life-altering music, not a single one adding anything new or important to the endless supply of covers of Dylan’s songs. 

Monica Barbaro makes for a sultry and soft Baez, her voice strong and lovely but a far cry from the deep soulful sounds the California songstress has graced us with over the decades. While she is more nuanced than the precious few other women in the film, we get very little from her; her strength, resilience, talent and compassion are used almost exclusively to contrast Dylan’s selfish but necessary(?) choices. Barbaro’s acting carries several scenes, particularly in contrast to truly poorly chosen, excruciating and lingering shots of Elle Fanning’s tearful visage. As one friend texted me, “…Elle fanning lol she’s better in like everything else she’s done.” The role could have been played by near anyone, with little skill required.

I left wishing that they’d made a fictional film, a fake star. I know the likelihood of that original music carrying the film along the way Dylan’s did is low, but why not try? Too soft a hand was used here, and the film is far too referential. Near-constant use of classic imagery from album covers, the first Googleable photo, and in-crowd jokes and bits distracted from some otherwise solid scenes. The cinematography, lighting, color grading, and sound design were all great, but good storytelling and character development fell to the wayside in favor of known names and a masturbatory take on a not-universally-beloved figure, helmed by the girlies’ favorite rat boy. 

Marginally shorter than the three hundred-hour films dominating the theaters right now (looking at your Gladiator: ​“Worst film I ever saw,” said one friend), but still far too long. Coulda been a podcast.