
By Joey Salgado
In James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown,” we see the young Bob Dylan as a cocky folksinger from the midwest with a made up name seeking acceptance from the vibrant folk music community of the early 60s, then turning his back on the movement and its musical form, rigid and constricting in his view, to embrace the vitality of rock and roll.
Dylan, as portrayed by Timothee Chalamet, is all arrogance masking his self-doubt. By the end of the movie, he has destroyed the old gods just as a newer, younger audience was hailing him as their own.
The movie conflates myth with reality, facts with falsehoods. It is a common technique in biopics, intended to add tension and drama to an otherwise conventional story of a musician’s journey from a guitar-slinging nobody to rock icon.
Dylan’s image, however, has been shaped by these same cinematic liberties. That he gave the movie his seal of approval and praised Chalamet for his performance should not be surprising. His endorsement of the movie, with all its myth and truth- stretching, is Dylan being the trickster, the jokerman still weaving mischief.
The movie ends with Dylan taking one last look at Pete Seeger before speeding away on his motorcycle after a disruptive electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Dylan on a motorcycle was the perfect metaphor for his wild ride after Newport, hurtling into the unknown, sustained by his newfound worldview, his cynicism, his art, arrogance, and chemical substances. Dylan after Newport could not be tamed.
A motorcycle accident in 1966, just a month after the release of another classic album “Blonde on Blonde,” forced Dylan into hibernation and reflection. Up in Woodstock, New York where he built a home for his young family, he would write and record songs with a group of musicians who would later be known as The Band. There, he went back to his roots, immersing himself in the familiar lore and rhythm of country, folk, and bluegrass (Songs from this period were later released as “The Basement Tapes”). And by 1975, after several middling albums and a tour with The Band, Dylan released two albums that boldly declared his comeback, “Blood on the Tracks” and “Desire.” Dylan was once again on a pedestal.
To discover Dylan in the late 70s, as I did, is to find the artist in the cusp of another reinvention. He released three albums, his so-called Christian Trilogy, where he preached salvation in Jesus Christ. And once again, he found himself booed and rejected.
But to continue listening and admiring Dylan through the aimless 80s and his reemergence in the 90s with the Grammy-winning “Time Out of Mind” is to be a willing accomplice to his past and present trickery, his deceits and disguises, his contempt for rules, his flirting with personas.
We ignore, or accept them as part of the bargain, because of his songs.
These are songs that are touchstones, messages from a flawed prophet. Songs from a thin young man with a nasal voice holding the power of conviction, political anthems like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They are a-Changin’,” “Masters of War,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol,” written at a time when music was seen as a uniting force to change society, topical songs straight from the headlines.
And in his electric period, “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Visions of Johanna,” “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” “Mister Tambourine Man,” the lyrics gorgeously surreal, pulling you in with its inscrutable beauty. Even his Christian albums reveal hidden treasures. Listen to “With Every Grain of Sand” and prepare to be moved by the holy spirit.
The Dylan we see in the movie and the Dylan we know from documentaries, books, interviews and what passes for an autobiography is an artist who rejects fame yet basks in it, blazes a trail that he soon abandons, balks at being told what to do yet philosophizes, heckles, and pontificates with his pen.
It’s about time we give up trying to understand Dylan. The guy is 83, after all. We should just embrace the enigma, the poet-king in his shadow kingdom.
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