Film Review 2025

A Complete Unknown remains unknown
By Johnny Otto



James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown is, by all appearances, a lovingly rendered portrait of Bob Dylan’s seismic electric pivot at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It hums with atmosphere. The production design captures the smoke and static of a turbulent moment in American music, and the performances—especially Timothée Chalamet as Dylan—are committed and convincing. Chalamet doesn’t impersonate Dylan so much as inhabit his wiry mystique, his aloofness, the kinetic twitch of a mind already miles ahead of the room he’s in. The musical performances are blistering, the direction confident. For fans of the era—and Dylan’s shapeshifting genius—the film delivers in tone and texture. But once the final chord fades, something essential remains conspicuously absent: the why.



We’re shown Dylan shifting genres, leaving folk purity behind, plugging in and lighting a match to the rules. But we’re never truly invited inside the mind that set it all in motion. What was he chasing? Was it artistic evolution? Rebellion? A spiritual reckoning? Was he trying to escape something—or someone? A Complete Unknown gestures at these deeper themes but never dares to sit with them. Instead, it drifts, content to marvel at the myth without piercing the veil. The film's emotional distance is especially stark when it comes to Dylan’s relationships. The women in his life—Joan Baez, Suze Rotolo, Edie Sedgwick—appear like cameos in his orbit: beautiful, mysterious, and ultimately disposable. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the introduction of Sylvie Russo, a fictional composite character. She meets Dylan, and within minutes, they’re together—no build-up, no real chemistry, no insight into who she is or why she matters. It’s emblematic of the film’s approach: relationships are implied, never explored. Everything is in motion, but nothing connects. These were women who mattered—not just in Dylan’s life, but in shaping the cultural moment. Yet here, they flicker across the screen like mirages, denied the depth that Dylan’s lyrics so often hint at. Take “She aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl”—a line brimming with vulnerability, contradiction, and intimate observation. It suggests a man deeply attuned to emotional complexity. But in A Complete Unknown, we rarely see those complexities dramatized. We hear nothing of the "sad-eyed lady of the lowlands," with her "hands like a jeweled lace," or the "ghost of electricity howling in the bones of her face." These aren’t just poetic abstractions—they’re portraits of real, complicated women filtered through Dylan’s mythic gaze. The film nods toward their presence but denies them any real interiority.



In "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right," Dylan sings, “I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.” That’s the kind of emotional calculus—love, sacrifice, resentment—that could’ve given the film a raw, beating heart. But instead, we’re left with silhouettes. We don’t get the heartbreak, the jealousy, the need. We don’t feel the weight of connection—or the ache of its unraveling. Even "Visions of Johanna"—arguably one of Dylan’s most emotionally charged songs—captures the ghostliness of presence and the sting of absence, the kind of haunted intimacy that could’ve fueled a more introspective film. Instead, A Complete Unknown stays at arm’s length, more interested in staging Dylan’s myth than understanding the man behind it. There’s also a curious absence of internal conflict. Was Dylan burdened by fame? By the expectations of his audience? Did he fear irrelevance? Regret? The film offers no clues. Dylan may have been famously elusive, but cinema demands more than mystery—it demands access. A Complete Unknown mistakes ambiguity for depth. For all its authenticity and artistry, A Complete Unknown feels like a surface-level hallucination of a myth, not an excavation of a man. Mangold constructs a vivid mural, but never cracks the surface. We’re left with a beautifully staged echo, a film more fascinated by Dylan’s shadow than his substance. Yes, Dylan defied understanding—but that doesn’t mean a film about him has to. If anything, the film mirrors Dylan’s own reluctance to explain himself. It’s faithful to the enigma. But in doing so, it risks leaving viewers with a question that no amount of electric noise can drown out: What are we supposed to feel? Because reverence without revelation is just another mask. And Dylan, more than anyone, knew how to wear one.