Are the guitars right? Is Joan Baez sidelined? Who is this Sylvie Russo? And why is it an American shouting ‘Judas’? A Dylan tribute singer, two biographers, a superfan and more weigh in
If you’re the sort of Bob Dylan fan who knows stuff like the fate of the green woollen coatwore on the cover of Freewheelin’ and how many times Dylan has performed Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands live , you may well be worrying about A Complete Unknown.
Salient elements of the story, musical and sartorial, are carefully assembled, from the right guitars to the famous green polka-dot blouse, while events are compressed and merged in order to tell larger truths within a manageable framework. Most obviously, the shout of “Judas!” from an outraged British folkie in Manchester in 1966 is moved to Newport a year earlier and given an American accent.
The film’s chronology is all over the place, events are invented or radically reshaped. Bizarrely, there’s not one establishing shot of the Village, which is a key element in the story – a “character”, really. But go see this enjoyable film, then use it as the launchpad for an exploration of the real artists and their music.author of Joan Baez: The Last Leaf, and the revising editor of Robert Shelton’s biography Bob Dylan: No Direction Home.
Sometimes younger people even say they haven’t heard of Bob Dylan – or if they have, he’s just some old man they can barely understand. But the film showed him as a really cool young guy, which might change that. And Chalamet nailed how enigmatic – and how self-actualised – he was, as well as how attractive.
I absolutely adored the scene in which Bob meets Guthrie and Seeger – it’s a measure of how powerful I found it that I don’t care it probably didn’t happen. The film does a great job of showing why he took off so quickly in Lower Manhattan. But once he’s become successful, you start to see the missed opportunities. Dylan actually first played The Times They Are a-Changin’ the month before JFK’s death: a massive moment of talent smelling change round the corner. But the film didn’t go there.
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