To paraphrase another musical icon featured in a previous film directed by the man behind the camera of A Complete Unknown, the musical biopic often walks a perilous line.  When Hollywood comes calling, it risks either mythologizing its subjects to the point of caricature or draining their lives of vitality through rote chronology, which anyone can find through a simple internet search or falling down a YouTube rabbit hole.  Yet James Mangold’s biopic of Bob Dylan defies these traps, delivering a film as richly inscrutable (and some might say far-fetched) as its subject.  By zooming in on Dylan’s formative years from 1961 to 1965, Mangold’s movie offers a snapshot of the folk icon as he’s poised to reshape music history—a focused narrative that feels gracious toward its subject and pure with its intentions.

This restraint is a masterstroke and, as it turns out, key to its success. Rather than attempting an exhaustive catalog of Dylan’s sprawling career, Mangold concentrates on his early Greenwich Village days, culminating in his infamous ‘electric’ performance at 1965’s Newport Folk Festival.  It’s easy to see why Mangold and screenwriter Jay Cocks opted for a small bite instead of attempting an entire gulp at once, basing their film on music journalist Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric!  These years encapsulate Dylan’s first significant reinvention, showcasing a still restless artist hungry to define his voice—and then redefine it again on his terms. The film captures this transition with a carefully raw reverence, making it feel less like a history lesson and more like you’re discovering Dylan, Joan Baez, and a host of other notable names and voices along the journey.

Transforming into Dylan with a performance far beyond imitation, Timothée Chalamet (remarkably in the same year Dune: Part Two etched his name forever on the A List) nails the musician’s distinct vocal cadence and mannerisms, but doesn’t overdo it, giving the film firm ground to stand on in the process. His ability to channel Dylan’s inner contradictions is genuinely astonishing, presenting a man who is restless yet deliberate, self-assured yet opaque to those closest to him.  Chalamet’s Dylan is defiant when being steered in a musical direction he’s unwilling to travel and disarmingly vulnerable while sharing a song with folk icon Woody Guthrie (Scott McNairy, C’Mon C’Mon, subtly showing the devastating effects of the Huntington’s disease that robbed him of extra years in the spotlight).  Chalamet doesn’t just play Dylan—he embodies the brilliant spirit of an artist who is constantly evolving even today.

The supporting cast complements Chalamet’s standout turn with vibrant performances in their own right. Monica Barbaro’s (Top Gun: Maverick) Joan Baez exudes both the activist intensity and artist exasperation, capturing the charged dynamic of an singer/songwriter eclipsed by the rising star she helped shape.  Barbaro’s voice is sensationally haunting, finding the same melancholic yearning that made Baez so entrancing.  Elle Fanning’s (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) Sylvie Russo, a fictionalized version of Dylan’s early muse Suze Rotolo, offers emotional grounding, portraying the complexities of being close to someone on the cusp of a cultural immortality they couldn’t have foreseen.  Usually, these amalgam characters come across as easy outs for a screenplay to cover many bases, but Fanning makes her case for Sylvie by creating a connection with Chalamet’s Dylan that feels totally real. While Mangold directed Joaquin Phoenix to an Oscar nomination as Johnny Cash in 2005’s Walk the Line, Boyd Holbrook’s (The Cursed) take on the Man in Black avoids comparison, creating a version of the late singer that feels refreshingly authentic.

Perhaps most impressive is the film’s musical authenticity. In a genre often marred by lip-synched performances that take away immediacy, A Complete Unknown continues a bold step of recent years by having its cast perform many numbers live. The decision pays off, giving each performance the emotional poignancy central to its original popularity. Dylan’s songs (or Joan’s covers of them) aren’t just interludes to move the film from event to event —they’re integral to the narrative, revealing his craft’s evolution and the era’s seismic cultural shifts.

As he did with Walk the Line, Mangold proves once again that he understands the rhythm of an artist’s journey. Where Phoenix’s Cash brooded with intensity, Chalamet’s Dylan flits between worlds with a subtler yet equally magnetic presence.  It’s easy to get as lost in the era as Dylan did, thanks to Phedon Papamichael‘s nostalgic cinematography; every shot is lit like it was brushed with a light grain and the concert footage is often filmed using mostly lighting available for the performances at the time. François Audouy’s production design recreates 1960s Greenwich Village with meticulous detail, from the coffeehouse performance spaces and studio apartmentsto the festival stages, while Arianne Phillips’s costumes evoke both the era’s bohemian culture and Dylan’s unmistakably iconoclastic style.

For someone like me—a bad Minnesotan whose Dylan knowledge is limited to a handful of tracks and trivia about his time in our state—the film felt unexpectedly accessible.  I feared I would be lost when the music kicked in, but I found that A Complete Unknown struck a delicate balance between celebrating Dylan’s genius and demystifying his mythos. While lifelong fans of the musician will undoubtedly revel in its subtleties and the interactions he has with other folk legends like Edward Norton’s (Glass Onion) Pete Seeger, newcomers are invited to experience the music and the man without feeling left behind.

Resisting the urge to canonize Dylan as a static icon or reduce him to a collection of anecdotes recreated by top-of-the-line actors and filmmakers emerges as A Complete Unknown’s, most defining characteristic.  Refusing to lock Dylan into a neat narrative reveals his many contradictions in the process, portraying him as a young man navigating fame, love, and the weight of expectation. Dylan’s story isn’t one of resolution but of perpetual reinvention—a theme that resonates far beyond the confines of Mangold’s surprisingly brisk two and a half hour film.

In that same way, allowing full song performances shows a trust by Mangold and the studio in the patience of their audience, further underscoring an overall respect for Dylan’s artistry. And anyway, these moments of musical immersion offer more insight into his creative genius than any dialogue ever could.  It’s one of several dicey choices that pay off, making the film feel less like a biopic and more like an experience that avoids the pitfalls of overambition. Crafting a story that feels rich yet digestible, it captures the essence of an artist in flux, a young man bristling against labels and expectations while shaping a legacy that would define generations.

Whether you’re a die-hard Dylan fan or approaching his music for the first time, the film’s final image leaves you with a sense of euphoric elation and more than a little eager to dive deeper into the enlightened man and his music.  Like Dylan himself, A Complete Unknown is unpredictable in where it will take us and evocative of an era that was simpler, kinder.  In the music biopic genre you could classify this as unapologetically itself—a cinematic folk song that sticks around long after the final chord has been struck.