Well, I have finally come across a movie that I like. For years I have been saying how much I hate Hollywood’s products. Oh, there is an occasional movie I like. Patton was one. There have been others. Most recently, Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid, comes to mind. The reason that I turned my back on Hollywood is that it is dominated by fantasists. Hollywoodians could not be trusted with the Bible, unless they were allowed to put pictures in it.
It is rumored that today Bob Dylan is a Reaganite.
But the other day I tripped across a movie that seemed to be true. It is A Complete Unknown and I knew at least one of the people in the movie. A Complete Unknown is a movie about Bob Dylan and how he came from being a complete unknown to being one of the most famous men in the entertainment field, whether he liked it or not.
I spent a night in Greenwich village with one of his acquaintances, a girl named “C.B.” something or other. Dylan had a lot of C.B.’s in his life. Of course, I was quite young then and I guzzled an enormous quantity of Ballantine ale with C.B. that night. Seven quarts if memory serves. Then I climbed into my Plymouth Barracuda that evening and a friend drove us back home to Chicago. Doubtless C.B. made an anonymous appearance in the movie.
And so back to the movie. It takes young Dylan from 1960 to 1965, which is to say from the time he began his climb to the top of stardom, again whether he liked or not; and there is plenty of evidence in the movie that he was an uncomfortable star. The movie is very honest, it seems to me. It is a dark movie in places. If this movie was done by Hollywood fantasists, that darkness would have disappeared on the cutting room floor. But the movie maintained the darkness when it was necessary and some lightness too. I counted several jokes, usually Dylan’s.
The actor who portrayed Bob Dylan, Timothée Chalamet, was superb and, for that matter, the casting of this movie was superb. Joan Baez was there. Pete Seeger was there. Even Woody Guthrie was there. The Newport Folk scene was there. There was tension as Bob Dylan was challenging the old Order by coming up with songs of enormous vitality. The vitality seems to have disappeared nowadays from rock and roll, or folk rock as aficionados of Dylan would like to say.
I never thought I would say it, but Bob Dylan comes out beginning to be a hero in this film. The final scene intimates Dylan’s forthcoming motorcycle accident, which doubtless will begin the next round of Dylan’s biopic, if there ever is one. And there I will be, sitting in the front row, cheering him on. It is rumored that today Bob Dylan is a Reaganite.
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