I have recently gotten into the music and man that is Bob Dylan. So, with this I decided to watch the “A Complete Unknown” biopic on Dylan, that only came out in December of last year. I was a bit skeptical at first, because as you know Bob Dylan is a very mysterious man. Though, this movie executed his rise to fame in an educational but entertaining way. It showed how Bob Dylan is not only a folk singer but so much more.

The movie opens with a man, Bobby Dylan, who enters a rehab room, with nothing but a guitar and the clothes on his back. In this room is, a man known as Pete Seeger, sitting beside a sickly Woody Guthrie. Bobby introduces himself and Guthrie asks him to play a song for them. Dylan then goes on to play a song he had written for Guthrie, “Song to Woody.” We learn about Dylan and how he left home to come to this very room to meet Guthrie, with nothing to his name.

Pete Seeger is taken away by Dylan and his music, he offers Dylan a place to stay, at Seeger’s home. This is the real turning point of the movie, since Seeger was already a great musician, he was a gateway for Dylan giving him the right connections to start his music career. We follow this plot until, Dylan meets a woman, Sylvie Russo, it follows their relationship and the impact she has on his music. As well as showing Dylan’s affair with a Joan Baez during the Russian Missile Crisis, and so on.

All these people and events inspiring Dylan’s music. Then the plot all led up to the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This is a huge and controversial turning point in Dylan’s career, for this is the moment that Dylan “went electric.” Playing his folk-rock songs such as, “Like a Rolling Stone” instead of his most popular and simple songs for example “Blowing in the Wind.” Many people then heard this new sound and thought it was awful compared to his simpler folk music. Dylan was booed during his time on stage, but it only made him play louder. After the festival we see Dylan ride away on this motorcycle, leaving us with the mystery of the man he is.

I think this biopic, staring Timothee Chalamet, was an amazing depiction of Bob Dylan’s rise to fame. It showed how Bob Dylan was, unruly and straight forward. Bob Dylan performed what he wanted to perform to get the message he wanted out, nothing less and nothing more. The movie truly put that into light, Bob Dylan really was, a complete unknown.