Chalamet Channels Bob Dylan in New Trailer for A Complete Unknown

Chalamet Channels Bob Dylan in New Trailer for A Complete Unknown

Christmas is shaping up to be quite the dynamic film slate this year, considering the impending arrival of not just Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, but also the high-profile Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, starring none other than Timothée Chalamet in the lead role. Could we have another counter-programming success story on our hands here? A little Bobsferatu phenomenon, perhaps? Regardless, the newly released trailer for A Complete Unknown gives us our fullest view yet of Chalamet’s take on not just the performing side but the personal side of the now 83-year-old music legend Bob Dylan.

Directed by James Mangold, A Complete Unknown is “set in the influential New York music scene of the early 1960s,” where the titular unknown singer-songwriter arrives with a guitar on his back and begins to captivate folk audiences with his songwriting. The film co-stars Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Norbert Leo Butz, Dan Fogler and Scoot McNairy as the constellation of musicians and influences in Dylan’s orbit, following his early, meteoric success as it builds toward a moment of controversy: His first electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This choice was widely criticized and indeed reviled in some folk circles at the time, as detailed in Jay Cocks’ 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, which provided the source material for this screenplay by Cocks and Mangold. Retroactively, of course, any music fan now recognizes this as the dawn of one of Dylan’s most fertile periods of songwriting, though it can be valuable to recall that in the context of the day, this isn’t how many music fans saw it at the time.

To his credit, Chalamet is doing his best to inhabit all of the odd little mannerisms that made Bob Dylan such an original in the era, a task that is far easier said than done. Nailing A Complete Unknown will be more than just being able to mimic the nasal singing voice of Dylan, but also his mysterious personal image and morphing political and musical viewpoints during the era. The trailer below seems to suggest that Chalamet is doing a more than adequate job, and if you asked us, this seems like exactly the sort of conventionally safe biopic–the type lampooned by Walk Hard so effectively–that historically is associated with major award nominations. So don’t be surprised when the Oscar buzz engine revs to life, in a quest to get Chalamet his second Best Actor nomination and first win.

In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for A Complete Unknown below, and await the arrival of Bobsferatu on Christmas Day, 2024.

 
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