Bob Dylan film “Like a Complete Unknown”: The eternally enigmatic

Hollywood is hungry for great music legends: Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Elvis Presley - big-budget film biographies have been made about all of their lives in recent years. The logic behind this is obvious: larger-than-life global stars whose albums have sold hundreds of millions of copies are very likely to make the box office ring too.

These works are usually not great cinematic art, but the math works. And so the circle of artists who are considered for such an undertaking is expanding ever further: to younger and still living singers like Robbie Williams ("Better Man") or musicians who died young not so long ago like Amy Winehouse ("Back to Black").

It is all the more surprising that a major production is only now being devoted to the legendary Bob Dylan. Perhaps because the last film about him was not that long ago: "I'm Not There" had to make do with a much smaller budget than "Like a Complete Unknown". However, Todd Haynes' biopic, which was released in 2007, was highly praised by critics and is well remembered for its unusual approach to the artist.

Six actors played Bob Dylan, including Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere. Instead of using a simple plot, the filmmaker let the many different facets of the nonconformist singer-songwriter shine through in a fragmentary collage of surreal narrative sequences and the well-known stages of his life.

Todd Haynes' film anticipated why right at the start: "Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake - electrifying star: Even the ghost is more than a human being," it said.

And perhaps that is another reason why no mass-market blockbuster about the master of metamorphosis has yet been produced for mainstream cinema: the life of Bob Dylan, who is the only musician to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature, is, like his work, too diverse to be forced into a market-compliant biopic in the spirit of "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Rocketman" or "Elvis" - films that tell the story of completely different personalities in an astonishingly uniform way, and (usually) squeeze their entire life path into a story that is always similar.

The initial outsider status is followed by a meteoric rise, then the crisis at the peak of the career - usually in the form of drug, pill and/or alcohol addiction. And after the eye-opening purification comes the big comeback, the triumphant finale or at least the conciliatory final note.

Director James Mangold ("Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Fortune") , who also wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks ("Silence") , fortunately doesn't even try to present a comprehensive film biography of Bob Dylan with "Like a Complete Unknown". Instead, the plot focuses on a relatively small section of the long career of the 83-year-old musician, who is still performing today.

Set in the early 1960s, the film tells of his musical beginnings, his first successes in the folk scene, his development into the voice of the protest movement in the USA - up to his infamous appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. There, Bob Dylan appeared on stage for the first time with a band, including electric musical instruments, and thus turned away from political folk and towards rock.

The title of the film, borrowed from the song “Like a Rolling Stone”, speaks for itself: Through its narrative focus, “Like a Complete Unknown” makes it understandable why the artist is still considered a wanderer between worlds, a great loner who never felt at home in one scene for long or wanted to be assigned to a specific political movement.

James Mangold shows Bob Dylan as eternally enigmatic, which is entirely in keeping with his public reputation. This reputation for myth is a major contributor to the artist's enduring fascination - and the film undoubtedly benefits from it. At the same time, however, portraying Bob Dylan in this way means neither getting closer to him nor opening up new perspectives on the well-known stages of his life.

What drives Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), who is only 19 years old at the beginning of the film, is not discussed or interpreted in detail in "Like a Complete Unknown". He arrives in New York with a flat cap, guitar case and canvas backpack to visit his great role model, the musician Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), who suffers from Huntington's disease, in the hospital.

He plays him and fellow artist Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) a song he wrote himself. The two folk music greats are immediately enthusiastic and Bob Dylan's great genius is simply there. Thanks to Seeger's support, who is active in the workers' and civil rights movement, the road to the first performance and record deal is not far.

With songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Masters of War," Dylan quickly rises from being a simple cover singer to becoming a hero of the socially critical folk scene. What really appeals to him about this development is also only hinted at in the film: TV images of major political events are shown again and again, the Vietnam War occasionally flickers across the screen, and his girlfriend Sylvie reminds him that the serious political situation urgently requires more determined music - instead of the same old hits.

The attempt to embed Bob Dylan in the sociopolitical spirit of optimism of the time ultimately remains as fragmentary as the relationship with Suze Rotolo, who is called Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) in the film. The complex relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), who was already active in the folk scene before Bob Dylan and - unable to write her own songs - soon interprets his, is cited in the film primarily as further proof of his genius.

A hint of jealousy drama creeps in when Baez and Dylan finally appear on stage together and partner Sylvie struggles with the pair's electrifying stage presence. But this conflict is not explored sufficiently to create a real emotional fall.

The fact that "Like a Complete Unknown" is nevertheless captivating as a solid entertainment film is less due to the plot than to the way in which Bob Dylan's music is brought to life. Director James Mangold includes significantly more original songs than many other musician biographies and lets classics such as "Like a Rolling Stone", "It Ain't Me, Babe" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" be heard almost in their entirety.

Timothée Chalamet sang 40 songs himself during filming, playing guitar and harmonica. Although his features are much softer than Bob Dylan's, his physical resemblance, including his wild curly hair, is striking in the film - and Chalamet's androgynous charisma, the slightly detached youthful hubris that is an integral part of his image, fits seamlessly into the character. His Oscar nomination is just as well-deserved as those in the supporting actor categories for Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro, who gets the most out of a reasonably well-developed role.

The fact that it ultimately received an impressive eight Oscar nominations is a bit much in terms of award euphoria, but it is hardly surprising: It is not just the Hollywood studios that are hungry for film biographies, the Academy loves them too. And in this case, despite all its narrative weaknesses, this recognition does not go to the completely wrong film. "Like a Complete Unknown" can (re)ignite enthusiasm for Bob Dylan - and that is more than the majority of comparable film biographies manage to do.