On Dec. 25, 2024, the movie “A Complete Unknown” was released, featuring Timothée Chalamet playing the role of Bob Dylan, a famous singer-songwriter from the 1960s. The film captivates the audience using Chalamet to deliver Dylan’s inspiring story, as he tries to earn his spot in the newly cemented folk industry.

The movie starts off with a young Dylan leaving home in search of his sick idol, Woody Guthrie, in order to catch some sort of spark to start Dylan’s music career. Through this encounter, Dylan also meets Guthrie’s friend and famous folk musician Pete Seeger, his soon-to-be mentor.

As the movie progresses, Seeger helps Dylan’s career take flight, building his great fame. As his career blooms, Dylan’s personality shifts, as he loses a strong sense of connection with his closest friends as well as losing his own sense of self.

Dylan’s relationship with women is a constant cycle, as he bounces quite frequently between two women, Joan Baeze, who was another folk musician he worked with, and his on-and-off girlfriend Sylvie Russo.

Towards the film’s end, we see a strong battle between traditional folk and a new folk-rock fusion when Dylan brings an unsettling new performance to a large audience at a folk festival. Though a controversial opinion, Bob Dylan changed the folk industry as a whole.

Chalamet portrays a very introverted and distant Dylan, contrasting Dylan’s behavior while performing on stage, which is bold and opinionated. Chalamet brings an unseen perspective of Dylan’s mindset and brings his story to life. While Chalamet executed this role well, Dylan’s life was not fully explored, not giving any real depth to his character nor his childhood background before his music. This made the movie feel especially long as it lacked detail and seemed to not have any true ending.

Something that was executed very well through this film was the decade accuracy. The film takes place in the 1960s, which was very apparent through the costuming and set design, let alone the details added of ongoing wars. Though this is something that they did well, they also failed to dive into the Vietnam war, which was pivotal to Dylan’s career, especially as many of his songs at the time were about his controversial opposition to it .

Overall, the movie lacked a strong plotline, leaving me feeling as though there was no specific plot. Though the actors showed great talent, the film could’ve seriously benefitted from a deeper outlook of Dylan’s background and shown more of his life outside his music career. I enjoyed the film, but there could have definitely been changes to make this two-hour movie feel more worthwhile.