I Completely and Unexpectedly Loved A Complete Unknown
And other last-minute Oscars movie takes.
When I was in seventh grade, I had a big classic rock phase. All the usual suspects —The Beatles, Led Zep, Boston — were in heavy rotation on my iTunes. But I could not stand Bob Dylan. Hated the sound of his nasally voice and garbled lyric delivery. I could recognize that he was a great songwriter because I loved it when other people sang his songs. (see: Adele’s rendition of “Make You Feel My Love.”)
In January, I watched for the first time Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash music biopic directed by James Mangold. This was a movie found to be completely inert, especially because that same night I saw Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (I had invited some friends over for this double feature, with a dinner break in between. I cooked chili con carne and hatch chile cornbread. We unanimously loved Walk Hard more.)
So I came into A Complete Unknown, a Bob Dylan music biopic directed by James Mangold, with pretty low expectations. I figured that it would be, at best, well-made but modestly enjoyable.
I loved this movie. A lot.
It is exemplary classical filmmaking on every level. Witnessing the creation and performance of music has rarely been so thrilling, and the script, by Mangold and Jay Cocks, weaves in all of their story arcs in those musical scenes, seemingly without effort.
Who is Bob Dylan, anyway? His talent is undeniable, his presence magnetic (it helps that Timothée Chalamet is the star of the film). Bob is also a huge prick, both when it comes to music and romance. (It’s not just Hollywood editorializing, per D.A. Pennebaker’s revealing documentary Bob Dylan: Dont Look Now.) The folk songs he wrote in the sixties instantly became protest anthems, yet he’s not a true activist. Or at least, he doesn’t externally react to the world around him. These scenes are admittedly hamfisted, but consider his sullen un-reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the JFK Assasination, then turning around to write a passionate song that speaks to the present moment. Is songwriting the only way he can express his feelings, or is he just really good at writing what the idealists in folk music want to hear? Maybe he’s a black hole: a gravitational force with nothing at its center.
Either way, he knows which way the wind is blowing. Bob is mentored by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (Ed Norton), true believers of the cause. But their appreciation of traditional, activist music becomes dogma. (Especially for Alan Lomax, a highly influential folk preservationist who is the closest thing this film has to a villain.) When Bob is singing “The Times They Are a-Changin',” he’s speaking to an establishment that doesn’t realize they are aging out of the counterculture. Towards the end of the film, Pete realizes that his kind of music is about to be supplanted by brash rock ‘n roll. Norton renders this heartbreak with the sweetest of grief.
Besides the music, A Complete Unknown works as a film about thwarted romances. The relationship between Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and Bob is an unsustainable fantasy, as she comes to realize at the end. The references to the Bette Davis classic Now, Voyager heighten their swooning love affair; she knows now not to ask for the moon. And the on again, off again, entanglement between Bob and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) sizzles. Their immediate chemistry is palpable, and their live performance of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” entwines their artistic perspectives with their personalities. At this point the two are no longer speaking, and although Joan’s willing to play up some flirtiness to give the audience a good show, Bob is utterly disinterested. He plays for himself, and people like that about him.
I saw some reviews complaining that after seeing this movie, you know less about Bob Dylan than you did before... that’s kind of the point. It’s right there in the title: he’s a complete unknown.
Nowadays I've started to actually enjoy Dylan's music, in spite of or maybe because of his voice. The times, they really are changing.
Going Out Swinging: Last Minute Oscars Movie Takes
The Oscars are on in literally six hours so here are my final opinions on some of the major contenders. Apologies that they are hastily written.
If The Brutalist can be said to really be about anything, it’s just about making movies. (To be fair this applies to a lot of films, like Oppenheimer.) The most damning thing I can say about this mid-century epic, which I really like and admire, is that I didn’t get any new insights about the film when I saw it a second time.
I had a big review of The Brutalist in the drafts at one point, but the world didn’t need another take about whether or not the ending is pro or anti-Zionist.
If it weren’t for the entire nation of Brazil throwing their support behind it, I’m Still Here would be rightfully seen as an unexceptional historical drama. If this was set in Europe during World War II or the Cold War it would be dismissed as Oscar bait.
Emilia Pérez is not a good movie, but a lot of people just cannot be normal about hating it. There’s been a lot of disbelief, expressed on the internet and by people I know in real life, that the Academy showered it with nominations.
But one thing that is forgotten when analyzing the Oscars is that not every member of the Academy is Martin Scorsese. For every hardcore cinephile in the industry, there’s someone with much more normal/basic tastes that just happens to work in Hollywood. In politics they talk about the "low information median voter" and that could also be applied to many Academy members.
For what it’s worth, my mom watched the trailers for all the Best Picture nominees and Emilia Pérez is the only one that she was really interested in seeing. (She hasn’t seen any of them yet though.)
The much maligned “penis to vaginaaaaaa” song/scene in EP is honestly my favorite scene. It’s one of the rare times that the film just goes for it and embraces ridiculous camp. The film sinks when it attempts serious melodrama.
There is no such thing as a film or performance being objectively better than another.
On that note, unless you personally know someone who worked on one of the nominees, there is no reason to be upset or outraged by the outcome of the Oscars. This whole thing is silly, caring about the collective opinion of roughly 10,000 film industry workers and executives. Why does one particular film win over another? Because more people voted for it, and they voted for it probably because they liked it the best. That’s it.
So let’s have some fun tonight! It seems like the telecast will be a good show.