An Unknown Unknown

There's a point early in A Complete Unknown where Sylvie (played by Elle Fanning), the girlfriend of Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), is preparing to leave for a semester in Rome, and she says that she doesn't want to think about how much she'll miss him, but that she also doesn't really know anything about him. Which I think speaks for the movie as well.

We do get a story, told in entertaining fashion, of Dylan's arrival in New York, his introduction to the folk scene with the help of Pete Seeger (Ed Norton), his on and off again relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and his eventual turn towards rock music (the film is based on the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald).  The only real insight on Dylan that we get is in response to Sylvie's comment that I mentioned above, where Dylan more or less says that the past doesn't matter, that moving forward is what's important. 

We do get some interesting tidbits that fill out the biography, such as Dylan's friendship with Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) and how he met his long-time road manager, Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison). The culminating scene at the 1965 Newport Folk Fest, and the reaction to his electric set, is very well done.

For the lack of insight into Dylan, I think the film does a good job giving insight into Seeger, whose devotion to folk music and his peaceful nature are severely tested as Dylan becomes more famous and less interested in folk. I really liked Ed Norton's performance, and was glad to see him get an Oscar nomination for it.

In the end I did like this movie, though I did feel like there was a bit of a hole at the center due to Dylan's basic unknowability (even if that was more of a feature of the movie than a bug).

We got six previews before the movie, some of which seemed more appropriate than others given who you'd expect would turn up for an Oscar-nominated movie about folk music:

Becoming Led Zeppelin was the most appropriate, being a film about a music group that got its start in the 1960s. It's a documentary, the first one about the band made with cooperation of its members. Having the band involved piqued my interest.

Perhaps the least appropriate was Until Dawn, based on the video game of the same name. A group of teens, led by a girl investigating the disappearance of her sister, are murdered, only to be brought back to life a la Groundhog Day to be murdered again by someone (or something) else. The only way to break the cycle is apparently to survive until dawn.

Two other movies focused on the more youthful segment of the audience were Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, both part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where I have literally only seen about 80 percent of one MCU film (the original Iron Man) I'll pass judgement.

The more artsy counterpart to Until Dawn is Presence, Steven Soderbergh's film told from the point of view of the poltergeist that haunts the house the Payne family just moved into. I like the idea of this movie, but am not really interested in seeing it.

I had the opposite reaction to The Alto Nights, about mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. Both roles are played by Robert DeNiro, which is a little too stunt casty for me. I was surprised to see Barry Levinson as the director, as between the casting and subject matter I assumed it was another Martin Scorsese film.