I normally hate watching biopics. There is something inherently homework-y about the genre. The worst kind of homework, in fact—the kind that pretends to entertain as it teaches, like a computer game in math class that keeps pestering you to remember the quadratic formula. I am not, however, a Timothée Chalamet hater, nor am I a Bob Dylan hater. I am a rare secret third thing: more or less indifferent to both. A Complete Unknown had all the makings of the kind of movie I’d skip. But despite my indifference, I am a sucker for hype, and I was curious to know whether Chalamet, the most inescapable star of 2024, lived up to the hype.
The short answer: he did. He is a moody, gravitational force in A Complete Unknown, effortlessly capturing the enigmatic qualities commonly attributed to singular genius. Chalamet’s Dylan is the kind of asshole too talented to blame for being an asshole. Of course he forgets to take out the trash! The man was writing “Masters of War.”
The singular genius is not an unfamiliar presence on screen. Dylan is cut from the same cloth as the lead character of last year’s Best Picture winner, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). It would be a waste of time to ask why we keep returning to these figures from history. They are magnetic and confounding. Whether we ought to center them is a different question, though not one that I have the space to address in this column.
Building a film around a temperamental genius is never as simple as placing a star at its center. Murphy and Chalamet both do their parts: they create, they scowl, they have affairs. They are misunderstood. But their perceived genius is less about their particular actions than it is about the reactions of secondary characters. This is apparent throughout A Complete Unknown. In her review of the film, Vulture’s Alison Willmore highlights the cast around Chalamet: “Its best sequences aren’t about Dylan so much as they are about what it was like to be in his orbit when it felt like he could remake the universe.” The film succeeds because it captures how Dylan’s peers saw him—what made them want to be near him, what made them want to support his career.
This is recognizable in Edward Norton’s portrayal of the avuncular folk hero Pete Seeger. The two first interact in Woody Guthrie’s hospital room, when Dylan arrives late one evening to play a song he wrote for his ailing idol. As Dylan performs, the camera lingers on Seeger, his face quickly escalating past intrigue into admiration. The viewer isn’t surprised Seeger is driving Dylan back to his house in the following scene. We know from the moment Seeger hears the younger musician that he will do what he can to ensure that Dylan succeeds.
Seeger isn’t the only historical figure impressed by Dylan. Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) is immediately entranced; Dylan all but negs Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) into an affair; Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) writes the kind of letters that would make a Swiftie blush; Dylan’s ex Sylvie (Elle Fanning) tends to his wounds with a lover asleep in her bed. But Seeger is the most dynamic of these minor characters, in part because what he wants from Dylan changes over the course of the film. Early on, he serves as a committed mentor, getting Dylan a slot at an open mic following Baez. But as Dylan transforms into a celebrity, the older musician takes on a grasping relationship with his former protégé.
The movie is not always kind to Seeger. He occasionally comes off as pitiful, even desperate, for Dylan’s attention. In one scene, he loiters beside Dylan’s car, hoping to convince him to grab a coffee—the young man feeds him an excuse, obviously exasperated by Seeger’s appearance. Secondary characters in films and novels are often at risk of being reduced to flat reflections of the protagonist’s inner state. In fact, I’ve already written about the role secondary characters in Conclave play in revealing Cardinal Lawrence’s internal conflict. But Seeger has an arc of his own. When Dylan refuses his request for a coffee, the viewer is not being invited to see how celebrity changes a person. Rather, they are given a window into Seeger’s quiet disappointment upon discovering he is no longer relevant to Dylan.
Seeger’s arc coexists alongside Dylan’s. The two are entwined, yes, and they clearly influence each other, but Seeger is driven by his own desires and aims. He wants to maintain the acoustic traditions of the Newport Folk Festival. He also wants the festival to succeed—and he believes he needs Dylan to headline in order to bring in a crowd. Seeger has a classic case of what Faulkner would call “the human heart in conflict with itself.” Importantly, his conflict is legible to the viewer, and this adds an emotional dimension to his interactions with Dylan. When he pleads with his former protégé to play an acoustic set at the festival, the viewer sympathizes with Seeger more than they do with Dylan, who, by this point, seems fairly conceited.
Our access to Seeger’s interior state is vital for making the movie work. He is not a mirror for Dylan. Nor is he a simple antagonist. Because of him, the movie feels lived in and true. Seeger’s also the type of character that is often necessary for making a novel work. When writing, it can be easy to spend excess attention on the protagonist to the detriment of secondary characters. Those secondary characters should have lives that are all their own, outside the life of the protagonist. Susan Choi’s novel My Education revolves around the love affair between Regina Gottlieb and her professor’s wife—but Regina’s story is grounded by the decades-long friendship between her and Dutra, a smaller character who is still just as alive and active as Regina and her lover are. Dutra, like Seeger, exists separately from the main character, and his arc feels equally authentic. In the climactic scene of the film, Seeger is brought to an emotional place neither he nor the viewer expected. Given the chance to support Dylan’s growth as an artist, he instead clings to what is best for himself and for the festival. It is a surprise, but it is an honest depiction of how a person like Seeger would act.
By capturing this, the film shows that a star can only be important because of the system surrounding it. Dylan might be a singular genius, but he only became a star thanks to people like Seeger and Sylvie and, to a lesser extent, Baez—those who felt compelled to encourage him. In its final scenes, the movie comes close to taking a critical stance toward the idea of the genius and the destruction it sometimes leaves in its wake. Seeger literally cleans up Dylan’s mess; Sylvie flees the festival in tears; and Baez, exhausted and bored, informs Dylan that he has won: he has successfully outshined all the folk singers at the festival. The viewer wouldn’t feel the impact of these final scenes if the film hadn’t spent time defining the characters in Dylan’s orbit. Yet, as I left the theater, I wasn’t thinking about the people Dylan left behind as he sped away on his motorcycle. I was thinking of Dylan, lyrics from his songs already making rounds in my head, eager to slip my headphones in and play “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” or, my personal favorite, “Desolation Row.” I was just as enchanted as everyone else.
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