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A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s biopic about Bob Dylan, finished filming five months ago. Shortly afterwards, the studio behind the film moved its release date forward to this Christmas – meaning it is in contention for next year’s awards.
Such confidence looks to have been well placed as after an early screening of the film in Hollywood this week, it has won rave reviews on social media. “Timothée Chalamet slides into Bob Dylan with an effortless yet focused determination,” wrote Variety’s senior awards editor, Clayton Davis. “He is fearless in some hypnotic moments.”
Meanwhile reviewer David Poland praised Chalamet’s “enormous power” and Gregory Ellwood called the film “superb” and “shockingly moving”, adding: “Chalamet is fantastic.”
Chalamet “delivers the performance of the year”, said fellow critic Scott Menzel. “The film is a true tour de force … Chalamet’s performance is not just about the voice and look but rather all of the little nuances and mannerisms that he perfectly brings to life.”
Should he prove triumphant at the Oscars in March, Chalamet would beat the record set by Adrien Brody in 2003 for the youngest leading actor winner by 268 days. (Brody was 29 years and 343 days when he won; Chalamet would be 29 years and 75 days.)
Brody, who won for The Pianist, will be one of Chalamet’s key competitors this awards season, for his role as a Holocaust survivor in epic drama The Brutalist. Other much-fancied performers include Colman Domingo for prison saga Sing Sing, and Ralph Fiennes for papal thriller Conclave.
A Complete Unknown is the 13th movie about the American singer-songwriter, after eight documentaries and three dramas in which he played a version of himself, as well as Todd Haynes’s experimental 2007 drama I’m Not There, which featured six actors playing different facets of Dylan’s public persona.
Dylan is now 83, and earlier this month played the Royal Albert Hall on the London leg of a three-year world tour. He granted music rights to Mangold for the movie, and snippets of Chalamet singing hits such as A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall have so far impressed pop scholars.
Chalamet was previously Oscar-nominated for his role in Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 romance Call Me By Your Name – losing out to Gary Oldman for Churchill film Darkest Hour. That nomination made him the youngest actor in contention for a lead performance Oscar since Mickey Rooney, 78 years previously.
Chalamet has had a successful 12 months commercially, with the origins musical Wonka dominating the box office last Christmas, while takings for the sci-fi sequel Dune II, released in February, now stand at $717m. A lookalike competition in New York last month – at which Chalamet put in a surprise appearance – was so popular police had to intervene to break up the crowd.
Chalamet is understood to have taken his role as Dylan extremely seriously. Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the film, has called his approach during principal photography “relentless”. All visitors to the set were refused, including Chalamet’s own family and agent, and he insisted on being referred to as “Bob Dylan” throughout – including on paperwork.
Mangold’s previous films include Walk the Line, the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic which won an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon who played June Carter Cash, as well as a nomination for its star, Joaquin Phoenix. The musical biopic genre has long been a favourite of Academy voters; other winners this century include Renée Zellweger for her performance as Judy Garland, Jamie Foxx (as Ray Charles), Marion Cotillard (Édith Piaf) and Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury).
This year, Angelina Jolie is in the running for the best actress prize for her role as Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s biopic, and there has been considerable praise for the Robbie Williams film Better Man, in which the pop star is played by actor Jonno Davies, albeit rendered as a CGI chimpanzee.
Next year will see the release of the Bruce Springsteen film Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White, and Antoine Fuqua’s controversial authorised take on the life of Michael Jackson, starring the late musician’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson. Scheduled for release later this decade are Sam Mendes’ quartet of films focusing on each member of the Beatles. Casting is still to be confirmed for those roles.
As with the Springsteen film, A Complete Unknown is adapted from a nonfiction book about a pivotal moment in its subject’s career: in Dylan’s case, his switch to the electric guitar at the Newport folk festival in 1965, risking the ire of his Greenwich Village friends and peers.
The film opens in the US on Christmas Day and in the UK on 17 January. The Oscars ceremony will be held on 2 March.
‘He gets the feel but doesn’t slip into caricature’: Guardian pop critic Alexis Petridis gives his verdict
Trying to sound like any living singer is a tough ask for an actor, however musically gifted. Trying to sound like Dylan, as Chalamet is required to in A Complete Unknown, is a task that borders on thankless. Dylan has the kind of immediately striking and entirely distinctive voice – “like sand and glue,” as David Bowie memorably put it – that is almost impossible to imitate without sounding preposterous. Anyone can do a daft comic parody of Dylan’s nasal quality and elongated vowels, but a serious attempt to capture his forceful tone and idiosyncratic phrasing is a different proposition entirely.
To his credit, Chalamet doesn’t go for exact replication. In the two instances of him singing that appear in the trailer, he gets the feel of both Girl from the North Country and Like a Rolling Stone (the former shifting between a declamatory style and something more intimate; the latter a bug-eyed, accusatory sneer), but doesn’t slip into caricature. You’re never going to confuse the sound in the clips for that of the original recordings, just as you’re never going to mistake a photo of Chalamet in character for a shot of the young Dylan, but there’s seems to be more than enough of the essence to see the audience through.
