A Complete Unknown review
On Formulaic Music Biopics
Studies (by me) show that music biopics are the worst film genre by a country mile. The Formula™ is so ubiquitous that if you have seen one, you have seen them all. You could, in fact, just treat yourself to a screening of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and mentally sub out the names to better tailor the dialogue to the appropriate subject. I promise, you will have a better time. The irony is not lost in calling the film A Complete Unknown when most of us can probably conjure a 70% accurate script just by hearing the words “movie about Bob Dylan going electric.”
If you’ve interacted with me in any meaningful capacity, you are likely aware of my affinity for Bob Dylan as a musician and, for lack of a better word, entity. To be clear, my skepticism about this film and my personal enjoyment of Dylan’s music are unrelated. Do not count me amongst those who want to complain that Timothee Chalamet is too pretty or that the movie’s timeline is “not historically accurate.” I really don’t care. My objections come from the mythologizing, the corniness of it all.
So after kicking the can down the road for a month, I finally got around to seeing the movie a couple of days ago and, overall, I would call it slightly better than expected.It is, at the very least, well-acted.
My general complaints about music biopics, however, remain unchanged. The plot remains a loosely cobbled together series of vignettes that serve as excuses to lead into the next musical performance. In one particularly groan-inducing scene, as young Dylan records a new track in the studio, a stunned producer looks at manager Albert Grossman and asks, “Who wrote this?” to which Grossman replies, “He did,” gesturing to the unassuming wunderkind strumming and mumbling his way to legend. In another, Dylan debuts his new song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at the Newport Folk Festival and, by the second verse, the entire crowd is singing along in perfect harmony. Jesse Moffette, a fictional bluesman played by no less than the real life son of Muddy Waters, is immediately impressed by young Dylan while essentially spending a whole scene mocking Pete Seeger. Woody Guthrie, rapidly deteriorating from Huntington’s disease, can muster only a single word: “Bob.” The point being made by this film (and every one of its siblings in the genre) is that every person walking the earth knew immediately that this kid was destined for greatness. And that’s the issue, there’s a lot of tell-don’t-show happening.
The reason for this is simple. The music biopic is above all else an advertisement and intends to force a name back into the zeitgeist. This can go one of two ways. On one extreme, we have Queen, who, in the wake of Bohemian Rhapsody’s release in 2018 surged in Spotify streams by 333%, with 70% of listeners being under the age of 35. On the other, we have something like the Jimi Hendrix biopic All Is by My Side, starring Andre 3000, which features no music written by Hendrix due to the filmmakers’ being denied permission by his estate.
So, who does an advertisement appeal to? Primarily, the newcomer, looking for an entry point. And so, we are greeted by a barrage of Greatest Hits, one after the other, providing a sampler platter of classics. Maybe you’ll like one. Maybe you’ll give it a stream on Spotify. For what it’s worth, I have been monitoring the Spotify stats. Exactly one year prior to the film’s release, Christmas day 2023, Dylan had 10,712,909 unique monthly Spotify listeners. Today, that number sits at 16,082,925. This is real, meaningful growth. And so, even if I don’t like the Formula™, it exists for a reason… It works.