As good a Dylan biopic as you'll ever get: A Complete Unknown reviewed

It doesn’t have anything new to say, which is right. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over

A Complete Unknown is the Bob Dylan biopic from James Mangold, who also made Walk The Line about Johnny Cash. It stars Timothée Chalamet, who is astonishing, and does his own singing. He may even be better at singing Dylan than Dylan is at singing Dylan. (Same sound but fewer of those bum notes that make you go ‘ouch’.) It doesn’t have anything new or insightful to say, which is right and proper. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over. Instead, the focus is on the four years leading up to his use of electric instruments at Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This was greeted by fans with such horror and outrage it was as if, live on stage, he was kicking puppies. He was devastated by the response. Not really. He may be the most unbothered fella there ever was.

Chalamet, who wears internal cheek fillers to give him the rounder early Dylan look, is so astonishing I may even be on the brink of forgiving him for Wonka and all that Dune silliness. He captures the Dylan slouch, the arrogance, even seems to hold a cigarette at just the right angle. It’s captivating, even if you could argue that it’s dramatically underpowered. The events building up to Newport are listless in nature – here he is, checking if a record store stocks his album – but it has a seductive, meditative, cumulative power. I wasn’t bored for a single second.