Trailer for Bob Dylan biopic 'A Complete Unknown' is highly intriguing
By Lee Vowell
Bob Dylan has such a devoted following that if a person is going to make a film of part of his life then the director and producers better get the person playing Dylan just right. For the upcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Timothy Chalamet will play the lead. There should be zero issues with this, though some will naturally complain, because Chalamet is likely capable of playing any role with excellence.
The film does not yet have a release date, but at least there is now a trailer. To be fair, what you can see below is more of a teaser trailer, and it's well-made. The same director who made the fantastic Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, James Mangold, is directing A Complete Unknown so fans can be sure the little details are perfected.
The teaser trailer alone is worth watching multiple times. The movie is now a full story of the icon's life, but about Dylan leaving his native Minnesota and moving to New York City. The plot ends with Dylan inventing electricity at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Of course, the exact timeline of how those events are interwoven into the film won't be known until we can watch the movie.
Trailer for Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is brilliant
The trailer implies there might be a grand sense of humor in the storytelling. We get to see all of the actors playing the main characters and we get to see Chalamet singing a song. He is good and does a great impression of the folk icon, but - and no offense to all those Dylanphiles - one does not exactly need the range of an opera singer to perform like Bob Dylan.
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One has to wait until the end of the trailer to find the humor, but it's worth the wait. The filmmaking of Chalamet's performance is subtle but brilliant. If trailers are meant to make people want to see the film, even if one is not a Dylan fan they likely will be waiting to buy tickets.
Mangold recently told Rolling Stone, "The first time I sat down with (Dylan), Bob said, 'What's this movie about, Jim? I said, 'It's about a guy who's choking to death in Minnesota, and leaves behind all his friends and family and reinvents himself in a brand new place, makes new friends, builds a new family, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to choke to death again - and runs away."
That sounds amazing. The trailer implies the film will be as well.
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