James Mangold may not have created all the cliches that became associated with the music biopic genre in the mid 2000s, but as the director of Walk the Line he certainly helped solidify many of them. So much so that the way he told his story of Johnny Cash became the main crux of the parody Walk Hard. It would have been easy to assume then that a similar format would await A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s latest venture into the genre focused on Bob Dylan. But that’s not what we get. Instead, Mangold and his star Timothée Chalamet tell a story that tweaks the conventions of the music biopic to perfectly suit the iconic musician’s persona.
A Complete Unknown tracks Dylan’s rise from his arrival in New York City in 1961 to his transition to electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. But the actual plot of the movie is rather light and any real exploration of Dylan’s backstory is nonexistent. Rather, the movie is more of a character study of Dylan and his shucking of the various forces that attempted to box him in.
