In a scene that will doubtless strike a chord with women the world over, on the morning following their first night together, after receiving his unsolicited opinion that she "tries too hard" with her songwriting, and that her songs "are like an oil painting at the dentist's office", Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) tells Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), "You're kind of an asshole Bob." Though no other character in James Mangold's eagerly-anticipated biopic of one of music's most enigmatic legends voices the same line, you can take it as read that, at some point in their dealings with the Minnesota-born musician, they've definitely had the same thought.
Adapted from American music journalist and folk/blues guitarist Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split The Sixties, a forensic look at Dylan's legendary and controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, A Complete Unknown opens with a wide-eyed, baby-faced Dylan tumbling out of a hitched ride onto New York's streets in January 1961 on a mission to locate Woody Guthrie, whose songs he says "struck me down to the ground". Directed to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, Dylan finds folk hero Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) at the stricken Guthrie's bedside, and is asked to play something for the two men on the acoustic guitar he's carrying. The confident young musician proceeds to play Song To Woody ("Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song 'bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along"), gaining instant approval from the folk scene elders: Seeger then invites Dylan to stay his home, and subsequently introduces him to, and champions him among, the Greenwich Village cognoscenti, who are similarly charmed and awed by his obvious talents.
