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A Complete Unknown Movie Review

A Complete Unknown is a 2024 biographical drama film directed by James Mangold and starring Timothee Chalamet. This is one of the worst movies of the year.

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“You know, you’re kind of an asshole Bob“

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In the early 1960s, 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrives in New York with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. Forming his most intimate relationships during his rise to fame, he grows restless with the folk movement, making a controversial choice that reverberates worldwide. James Mangold continues to disappoint me as the films that he made after ‘Logan’ are very mediocre. But this is by far the nadir of his career and one of the most overrated movies of 2024, a film that had no business being nominated for any Oscars, let alone 8.

Timothee Chalamet is undeniably a great actor, do not get me wrong. But this is by far his weakest performance and it’s not his fault as he was given nothing to work with. The movie is titled well as we do not get to learn anything about Bob Dylan through the course of this overlong slog. Biopics should feel intimate and they should humanize their subjects, but this one did the opposite – it depicts him as this mysterious godlike figure whom the women swoon over and the fans obsess with. It made him highly unlikable and it made the movie reek of ego-boosting narcissism.

Monica Barbaro and Elle Fanning are just there to be put into this very boring love triangle. Their characters are straddled with having to look in love-struck awe at Dylan while he is playing his music. This is literally what they are doing in this entire film. They still managed to give more memorable performances than Chalamet as their turns are more emotional, but still it is ridiculous just how underdeveloped all of these characters were. Edward Norton was good as he always is, but his role was also forgettable and frankly boring.

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A Complete Unknown also doesn’t have anything distinguished about its technical aspects. The acting actually fared best here, but the directing is beyond pedestrian and the fact that Mangold was nominated for this mediocre work truly ranks among the worst decisions from the Academy this year. The cinematography is lackluster and the overall look of the movie is uncinematic and uninspired. The editing and pacing are terrible. I felt its long runtime throughout and I was just waiting for this chore to be over.

There is no story or characterization to speak of here. Instead, what we got is a film that functions as a musical, but not one of those musicals where the numbers develop the plot and the characters, but serve as stopping points between the plot points that themselves are non-existent. The bulk of this movie is just Bob Dylan singing and everybody else swooning over him and that’s it. Even if I were a fan of his music, which I am not, I would be utterly bored seeing a film that just includes his songs without really commenting upon them. A biopic should at least try to tell a story about its subject, which this one refused to do, perhaps due to Dylan not having had an interesting life at all, which only further shows us that not every celebrity is worthy of receiving a biographical film treatment.

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