A Complete Unknown

Look, I hate saying a genre or style of film is not for me, because whenever you say that you limit the possiblity of discovering a new film which you might love, but this is getting exceedingly hard to say when it comes to musical biopics. I really just don't vibe with them at all.

I had a lot of hope going into this, as on the surface it seemed to be doing something different. It wasn't interested in just rehashing a life story, instead exploring the period of time when Bob Dylan transitioned from Folk to Electronic, but it sadly still followed the same tired beats.

As with most musical biopics, the central performance is a main draw and Timmy is quite good as Dylan. I have no real bearing on if it's an "accurate" performance as I don't know a lot about Dylan but I did enjoy his take on him.

However, it's a very difficult character to connect with. This is the point of the movie, it's completely intentional, and after the fact I have softened on this decision and actually think it lent itself to some interesting moments in the film, but when you're in it it's so hard to latch onto anything as you're completely disconnected from him.

In part this is why I think the standout of this film is Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, she blew me away. She goes on an emotional arc with Dylan, and is the only real person in the movie to feel rough around the edges, like a real person. The others feel almost expository, as if they are needed to service a story instead of being fleshed out people.

This is best exemplified in Elle Fanning's Slyvie, who doesn't give a bad performance, but is given nothing more than the beats you'd expect her character to go through. You fly through their relationship to the point that it doesn't feel real - maybe this is the point? - so when her more quiet moments appear, they don't hit as hard as they should, as the time has not been afforded to make her a real human with feelings.

It, like most biopics, also lacks this depth of character as it opts to just essentially be a concert film. Look, the music isn't bad, and I quite enjoyed listening to the songs, but showing this in place of character building always frustrates me so much.

Looks gorgeous and as I said the performances are good, I liked the attempts at doing something a little different, but at the end of the day it fell back into the same trappings they all do and possibly what's worse is I didn't even really learn anything about Dylan. So fine!