shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2025-02-12 03:23 pm
shewhomust) wrote2025-02-12 03:23 pm
Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is...
If my memory is to be trusted - and (see previous post) it just might be - it is five years since we last went to an actual cinema. That seems an impossibly long time - longer than if I had said "not since lockdown", though it means the same thing. Last Monday was certainly our first visit to the no-longer-new Odeon cinema, with the elaborate food and drink menu and the fancy reclining seats...
We were there, of course, to see A Complete Unknown: a movie about Bob Dylan, following him through the period from his arrival in Greenwich Village as - well, yes - a complete unknown, from his immediate adoption of and by the folk scene he found there to his door-slamming departure: and all the while he was writing so many great songs, and we'd enjoy hearing those, too. I wasn't going to miss this.
But at the same time I was wary, because I have problems with docudrama, and not just because I'm liable to be distracted by wondering what's true and what isn't. Setting that aside (which in this case you mostly can, because most of the story is already very familiar) it's clear that A Complete Unknown is docudrama with the emphasis on the drama: facts are set aside, tweaked, manipulated in the interests of telling the story. Which is what docudrama does, but there is something uncomfortably intrusive about this real-person fanfic. The film encourages its audience to wonder: who is this person, what does he want, what matters to him, why does he act as he does? Is this more acceptable because the questions receive no answers, because in this respect too he remains a complete unknown? Perhaps. For the first time - whether because of something in the handling of the story, or just because it is now the 21st century - I wondered whether the young man I was watching was in some way neurodivergent. Which feels improper when you are talking about a real person, even a real person as he used to be, sixty years ago.
Well, if it doesn't bother Dylan, I'll try not to let it bother me. He has evidently given the film his blessing: to the extent, says the internet, of suggesting a fictional scene to be included (which says more than I can express about man and movie both). It was apparently at his request that Suze Rotolo (who died in 2011) appears under the name Sylvie Russo. If this is discretion, it doesn't prevent her being dragged into a heavily fictionalised version of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, along with the "Judas!" / "I don't believe you..." exchange from the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The art of adapting for the cinema is to prune and compress the facts to fit your story, and the story that interests A Complete Unknown is of an emerging artist working through two sets of relationships: his relationships with women, as represented by 'Sylvie Russo' and Joan Baez (when did Sara Lownds come into the picture?) and his relationship with folk music, as represented by Pete Seeger.
Four strong performances, though I was never going to forget that this is a movie, these are actors. Perhaps if I had closed my eyes, because the clever treatment of the voices produces something close to the originals - but visually Monica Barbaro does not particularly resemble Joan Baez (she is prettier, less distinctive). My first reaction was that Timothée Chalamet was nothing like the Bob Dylan on the sleeve of his first album; but as the character grew older they converged, and there were moments when what I saw on the screen was so close to a familiar photograph that I tumbled out of suspended disbelief into the uncanny valley. But it is Edward Norton who is getting all the love, for his portrayal of Pete Seeger. Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it's a great part, he plays it well, and it's a joy to see Seeger given some importance in a popular movie; on the other, although the performance is a lovely tribute to Pete Seeger, it is in the service of a storyline which is highly fictionalised even by the standards of this highly fictionalised film. Was the real Pete Seeger not enough, that his importance has to be inflated in this way? I was surprised to find myself thinking fondly of the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis ; it has its faults, but it is interested in the whole variety of the contemporary folk scene, while A Complete Unknown is a film about Bob Dylan, for people who think that the important thing about Pete Seeger is what he can show / tell us about Bob Dylan.
Likewise, all the other people who can be identified, with a greater or lesser degree of certaibty: the film seems to be playing some sort of Spot the Musician challenge. For example, the first thing Dylan does on his arrival in Greenwich Village is go to a bar, where he gets into conversation with someone who tells him where to find Woody Guthrie: should I have identified that someone as Dave Van Ronk? I didn't, until I saw the credits. The facial hair made Peter Yarrow stand out from the crowd, even before he was brought into the foreground; mysteriously, IMDB's extended listing includes Stephen Carter Carlsen as "Paul Stookey (uncredited)" (and disdained by Dylan as inauthentic, because 'Paul' is not his real name) but there's no sign of Mary Travers. When Dylan follows Bob Neuwirth to his gig, who are the Irish band he finds there? From outside the venue, hearing them singing The Irish Rover, I expected the Clancy Brothers, but the look was nothing like (perhaps they couldn't get the knitwear? Guardian article about the costumes reveals that Pete Seeger's home-knitted jumpers were a challenge). Alan Lomax is there, but "where," asks David Browne, (author of a book on Greenwich Village, and quoted in
an article in Variety) "are Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler, Carolyn Hester and Terri Thal, Dylan’s first manager?" Indeed. I admit to being needled that there was room in the film for There but for Fortune (twice, once sung and once just the guitar accompaniment) but not for any indication that Dylan was not Baez's only source of non-traditional material. Browne suggests that "[Dylan's] rapport with Ochs could have made for a few meaty scenes; their rivalry embodied the topical-vs.-personal, acoustic-vs.-electric debates of the time." That's a film I'd love to see, but it isn't this one.
On the other hand, A Complete Unknown brought Dylan's music home for the Guardian's Laura Snapes: that's got to be worth something.
We were there, of course, to see A Complete Unknown: a movie about Bob Dylan, following him through the period from his arrival in Greenwich Village as - well, yes - a complete unknown, from his immediate adoption of and by the folk scene he found there to his door-slamming departure: and all the while he was writing so many great songs, and we'd enjoy hearing those, too. I wasn't going to miss this.
But at the same time I was wary, because I have problems with docudrama, and not just because I'm liable to be distracted by wondering what's true and what isn't. Setting that aside (which in this case you mostly can, because most of the story is already very familiar) it's clear that A Complete Unknown is docudrama with the emphasis on the drama: facts are set aside, tweaked, manipulated in the interests of telling the story. Which is what docudrama does, but there is something uncomfortably intrusive about this real-person fanfic. The film encourages its audience to wonder: who is this person, what does he want, what matters to him, why does he act as he does? Is this more acceptable because the questions receive no answers, because in this respect too he remains a complete unknown? Perhaps. For the first time - whether because of something in the handling of the story, or just because it is now the 21st century - I wondered whether the young man I was watching was in some way neurodivergent. Which feels improper when you are talking about a real person, even a real person as he used to be, sixty years ago.
Well, if it doesn't bother Dylan, I'll try not to let it bother me. He has evidently given the film his blessing: to the extent, says the internet, of suggesting a fictional scene to be included (which says more than I can express about man and movie both). It was apparently at his request that Suze Rotolo (who died in 2011) appears under the name Sylvie Russo. If this is discretion, it doesn't prevent her being dragged into a heavily fictionalised version of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, along with the "Judas!" / "I don't believe you..." exchange from the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The art of adapting for the cinema is to prune and compress the facts to fit your story, and the story that interests A Complete Unknown is of an emerging artist working through two sets of relationships: his relationships with women, as represented by 'Sylvie Russo' and Joan Baez (when did Sara Lownds come into the picture?) and his relationship with folk music, as represented by Pete Seeger.
Four strong performances, though I was never going to forget that this is a movie, these are actors. Perhaps if I had closed my eyes, because the clever treatment of the voices produces something close to the originals - but visually Monica Barbaro does not particularly resemble Joan Baez (she is prettier, less distinctive). My first reaction was that Timothée Chalamet was nothing like the Bob Dylan on the sleeve of his first album; but as the character grew older they converged, and there were moments when what I saw on the screen was so close to a familiar photograph that I tumbled out of suspended disbelief into the uncanny valley. But it is Edward Norton who is getting all the love, for his portrayal of Pete Seeger. Well, yes and no. On the one hand, it's a great part, he plays it well, and it's a joy to see Seeger given some importance in a popular movie; on the other, although the performance is a lovely tribute to Pete Seeger, it is in the service of a storyline which is highly fictionalised even by the standards of this highly fictionalised film. Was the real Pete Seeger not enough, that his importance has to be inflated in this way? I was surprised to find myself thinking fondly of the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis ; it has its faults, but it is interested in the whole variety of the contemporary folk scene, while A Complete Unknown is a film about Bob Dylan, for people who think that the important thing about Pete Seeger is what he can show / tell us about Bob Dylan.
Likewise, all the other people who can be identified, with a greater or lesser degree of certaibty: the film seems to be playing some sort of Spot the Musician challenge. For example, the first thing Dylan does on his arrival in Greenwich Village is go to a bar, where he gets into conversation with someone who tells him where to find Woody Guthrie: should I have identified that someone as Dave Van Ronk? I didn't, until I saw the credits. The facial hair made Peter Yarrow stand out from the crowd, even before he was brought into the foreground; mysteriously, IMDB's extended listing includes Stephen Carter Carlsen as "Paul Stookey (uncredited)" (and disdained by Dylan as inauthentic, because 'Paul' is not his real name) but there's no sign of Mary Travers. When Dylan follows Bob Neuwirth to his gig, who are the Irish band he finds there? From outside the venue, hearing them singing The Irish Rover, I expected the Clancy Brothers, but the look was nothing like (perhaps they couldn't get the knitwear? Guardian article about the costumes reveals that Pete Seeger's home-knitted jumpers were a challenge). Alan Lomax is there, but "where," asks David Browne, (author of a book on Greenwich Village, and quoted in
an article in Variety) "are Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Len Chandler, Carolyn Hester and Terri Thal, Dylan’s first manager?" Indeed. I admit to being needled that there was room in the film for There but for Fortune (twice, once sung and once just the guitar accompaniment) but not for any indication that Dylan was not Baez's only source of non-traditional material. Browne suggests that "[Dylan's] rapport with Ochs could have made for a few meaty scenes; their rivalry embodied the topical-vs.-personal, acoustic-vs.-electric debates of the time." That's a film I'd love to see, but it isn't this one.
On the other hand, A Complete Unknown brought Dylan's music home for the Guardian's Laura Snapes: that's got to be worth something.
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