Poetry in Motion: a Metaphysical Mystery Tour
“A Complete Unknown” film review by Robert Tobin
Harder than doing a biopic about a reticent cultural icon is this film’s effort to document the ephemeral process by which feelings and thoughts get transposed into lyrics and song.
The only thing more ill-advised is any attempt to judge its story about someone who resists all judgement, a singer hard to hear in more ways than one, and a leader adverse to followers. I found it a difficult movie to watch, but was glad I did.
Doing so made easier to envision a Jewish kid from small town Minnesota hitting the Big Apple as everything everywhere was a-changin’, seemingly all at once and despite all efforts to stop it. Dylan was indeed “a complete unknown” not just to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and all others trying to make the scene back then, but to himself most of all.
This film captures an artist’s struggle to find the creative place that lays between obsession and compulsion, resonating all going before without being impinged by it. The challenge of an artist communicating in a compelling way within a newly emerging medium is depicted while surrounded by people trying to impose their will, artistic and otherwise, over one’s own.
“A Complete Unknown” accurately portrays the inverse relationship between age and maturity when one is old enough to know better and young enough to do it anyway. Laments resurface, accumulated in the early years of life, when naivety and hormones forge decisions unencumbered by an undeveloped pre-frontal cortex, are more disposed to quick reaction rather than reasoned response.
The film highlights the line between ecstasy and excess that is a mile wide as we approach, but microscopic when we cross … especially when perceptions are distorted by influences. Discretion is the first thing to go.
The film starkly displays the downside of celebrity, which seems only to have an upside to all except those who actually experience it. The mundane never looked more attractive after watching a man whose increasing success only brings closer the perils of failure.
This movie certainly didn’t pull any punches when depicting the defensiveness masking vulnerabilities exposed by the entanglements of creative exploration at 3AM, or PM, or whenever. Seeing Dylan treat those around him so poorly is as understandable as it is inexcusable, heightening respect for those on the high wire of life who retain their humanity and humility while navigating the shoals of self-doubt.
The best tribute to the film’s acting: they appeared they weren’t. The songs likewise seemed to arrive at the time of their birthing. As real was the actuality of angst, which arises whenever existential political clefts reveal themselves; also gripping was the sense of exhilaration when words and music combined to provide not just meaning, but purpose—in this case transmuting disjointed motion into a concerted movement. While not successful in producing eternal peace, it did at least stop a war.
In “The Witch of Portobello,” Paulo Coelho observed that “all creative human beings have such experiences, which are known as ‘possession by the sacred.’ Suddenly, for a fraction of a second, we feel our whole life is justified, our sins are forgiven, and that love is still the strongest force, one that can transform us forever. But at the same time, we feel afraid … only very strong souls allow themselves to be swept along.”
Perhaps the film’s most touching moment was seeing Dylan as one of those souls, riding off at the end of the movie on the Triumph Tiger 100SS motorcycle which nearly killed him soon thereafter. As in all things, he was two years ahead of the pack of rockers dying at age 27 while “trying to get out of the rat race”, as he called it.
Resulting injuries permitted few public appearances and no touring for nearly eight years while he repositioned himself for the almost sixty years of insight and inspiration emerging from what has become his Never-Ending Tour, which averages a concert about once every three days.
“A Complete Unknown” shows Dylan not so much breaking the mold as conjuring it on the fly, leaving a path well-marked by a sign that tells “writers and prophets” of every genre: you too can do it. Unlike Elvis before him—who had his posse, or the Beatles concurrent with him—who at least had each other, Dylan traversed this gauntlet alone and unguarded. That he survived, let alone thrived, attests to the power of the muse within and around us … its accessibility, ingenuity, and adaptability.
This movie invites us all to become better channels for its flow.
REVIEW: “A Complete Unknown” DIRECTOR: James Mangold WRITER: Jay Cocks and James Mangold ACTORS: Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, Mill Valley Tam High grad Monica Barbaro* as Joan Baez, and Scott McNairy as Woodie Guthrie. RUNNING TIME: 2 hours 21 minutes. Based on the 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric!” Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties” by Elijah Wald.
Robert Tobin has been playing with words and music for seven decades. He was on the steps of the U.S. Capitol for anti-war demonstrations in the early Seventies, and spent the next fifty years in and around the Bay Area helping low-income people help themselves and each other. He is the father of four, step-father to four, and grandfather to ten who brighten future prospects for a kind and loving world.
