New in PJ Media:
Biopics of contemporary figures are risky. Austin Butler is widely credited with doing an admirable job in the 2022 movie “Elvis,” but he faced one obstacle that was well-nigh insurmountable: virtually everyone on planet earth knows what Elvis Presley looked like, and as Lloyd Bentsen might have told young Butler, “I knew Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley was a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Elvis Presley.”
Timothée Chalamet has the same problem portraying young Bob Dylan in the new hit movie “A Complete Unknown.” The world is awash with photos, videos, and audio recordings of Bob Dylan. Chalamet has to contend with comparisons to the greatest Bob Dylan impersonator of them all, a certain Mr. Robert A. Zimmerman. Yet surprisingly enough, Chalamet does a credible, creditable job, and the movie moves along briskly in telling a staple tale of Boomer mythology, the Bob Dylan Origin Story.
As is generally the case with films of this kind, there is a certain amount of corner-cutting and fudging of the facts in order to heighten the drama; here is a list of ten inaccuracies in the movie, and there are more where those came from. Yet most of the things that the film gets wrong are minor or done in service of increasing the film’s dramatic impact, and so can be excused easily enough. One major problem with the film, however, is not so much an inaccuracy as a missed opportunity, a chance that the filmmakers had to include a scene of considerable drama that actually fit in with much of what they did portray.
The movie shows young Dylan arriving in New York City and making a name for himself in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early 1960s. Everyone involved is on the far left; Dylan ventures to a New Jersey hospital to meet his hero, Woody Guthrie, and there (at least in the movie) encounters another folk singer, Pete Seeger.
Both Guthrie and Seeger (superbly portrayed by Edward Norton) were hardcore leftist ideologues. So was Dylan’s love interest Joan Baez (here somewhat disappointingly played by Monica Barbaro, who is fine but conspicuously lacks Ms. Baez’s beauty, voice, and charisma) and another Dylan girlfriend, Suze Rutolo, who walks through the Village arm-in-arm with him on the cover of his 1963 album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” and is here transmogrified into “Sylvie Russo.”
“A Complete Unknown” shows Dylan slipping easily into this milieu, effortlessly writing protest songs that win the awe and respect of his peers and rivals, as well as the adulation of folk music fans. The movie then follows Dylan’s determination to start using electric instruments and striving for a sound that was more rock and roll than conventional folk music. He is portrayed as a hero of artistic integrity, steadfastly pursuing his artistic vision even over the furious opposition of Seeger and other folk purists, and the jeers and catcalls of the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival.
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Stuart Laughton says
Marvelous writing and marvelous insight. Thank you!
Captain Quirk says
Who cares about this notorious sh**. Bad musician, bad singer, bad lyrics, wrong side of history. ‘Where have you been, my blue eyed son…’ Please allow me to mirror this. ‘Blue eyed son’: is he perhaps discriminating? Besides, he’s a whiner and a bad one at that. He always sounds like he has a hangover.
somehistory says
He may be an all-around good guy, but there is only one song of his that I like and listen to. The “Positively” one.
James Lincoln says
Yes, somehistory.
Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” has great lyrics.
St Croix says
“Could this omission have to do with the fact that Hollywood today is more politicized than ever before, and so when filmmakers are producing movies of this kind about the heroes of their leftist subculture, they don’t dare include anything that doesn’t fit in with the myth they’re trying to create?”
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Why yes, yes indeed that could be why!
Otherwise they’d be injecting ripples into the Matrix, and we don’t want glitches. People might start catching on.
Andrew Blackadder says
I only seen Dylan live once and he was on stage with Eric Clapton in the Nurenberg Stadium in Germany as Dylan stood on that small platform where Hitler had stood some decades previously as he sang for the German youth I have no doubt that Dylan knew exactly what he was doing as he looked over at the German youth who worshiped him whereas Hitler was telling the German youth just how evil men like Dylan actually were.
This was sometime in the 1970s.
I want to see this movie of his life as Dylan has been an important part of my life growing up in the 1960s-70s, now Im 76 and notice the answer is blowing in the wind.
.Mick says
Dylan showed signs of going bush in 1962 with A Hard Rain. I don’t understand why Seeger and the Mancunian who shouted Judas in 1965, felt betrayed.
Noone shouted Judas at the Albert Hall in 65, but I guess most preferred the acoustic first half, which ended with the brilliant, anti-establishment Its All Right Ma.
From memory the electric second half included the ludicrous Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.
Mick says
With some exceptions, the acoustic Desolation Row in 1965 opened the gates to the flaky and the trivial: BOB, JW Harding. I dozed off.
Tangled up in blue and Dignity woke me.
LET says
What does this have to do with Jihad? Am I missing something?
Robert Spencer says
Yes. You’re missing the heading of this website: “Jihad Watch AND THE LEFT COLUMN.”
Larry says
Thanks, I don’t usually go to the Home page – did not notice that.