A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

A COMPETE UNKNOWN focuses on the early, groundbreaking career of Bob Dylan, with insights into his personal and professional connections to the 1960s folk music revival led by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and others, and leading up to his controversial performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he played three folk rock songs using electric guitars. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN features some great songs and fine performances, but it soft-pedals the communist roots of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and the folk music revival and distorts too many other biographical facts, including the actual facts of what happened at the 1965 festival.

The movie opens with Dylan arriving alone in New York City in January 1961 (not true, he was actually with a friend when he arrived). Dylan immediately goes to the hospital where the famous folk singer, Woody Guthrie, is suffering from Huntington’s disease, a disease that breaks down nerve cells in the brain. In the hospital, Dylan also meets Pete Seeger, who’s also visiting Guthrie.

In reality, Dylan met Seeger for the first time at a Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall, where Dylan sang “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.” Also in reality, Dylan first went to Guthrie’s home in Queens, where he met his two children, Arlo and Nora. He then met Guthrie at the New Jersey home of another couple, where Guthrie often spent his weekends after being in the hospital all week.

The movie then shows Dylan crashing at Seeger’s home. However, in actuality, when he arrived in New York, he never did that. Instead, he couch-surfed during his first few months in New York City. Seeger and his family hear the first part of Dylan’s song “Girl from the North Country” while he stays with them, but he didn’t write that song until late in 1962.

Eventually, Dylan takes a young girlfriend, a civil rights activist who encourages him to write political protest songs. However, at Dylan’s request, the movie changes the girlfriend’s name and fictionalizes parts of their relationship. They have a close relationship, but sometimes he acts like a jerk. Also, at one point, he has a short affair with Joan Baez, the famous folk singer and political activist. However, that affair didn’t start until later.

Dylan is soon playing at the Newport Folk Festival in Connecticut, which was started by Seeger, actor/singer Theodore Bikel (THE AFRICAN QUEEN and MY FAIR LADY) and others, including a man who soon became Dylan’s manager. Dylan also starts to become a big celebrity, often wearing sunglasses, riding a motorcycle and appearing detached and sarcastic.

Everything eventually leads up to Dylan’s electric guitar band set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, which upsets many people in the crowd, especially Seeger and festival organizer Al Lomax. When Seeger goes to pull the plug on the sound system, he’s calmed down by his wife, Toshi. However, Lomax gets into a fight.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN features some great songs and fine performances. As such, it spotlights the musical and cultural impact Bob Dylan had on folk music and pop music in general. However, the movie soft-pedals the communist roots of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and the folk music revival and distorts too many other biographical facts, including the actual facts of what happened at the 1965 festival.

For example, Seeger says his reaction to Dylan’s electric guitars at the 1965 festival was not because of Dylan going electric. He says he was more upset by the sound distortion in the amplifiers, not the electric guitars themselves. Also, reportedly it wasn’t Seeger’s wife who calmed him down and stopped him from pulling the plug. It was Seeger’s folk music friend/colleague, and actor, Theodore Bikel (see above).

The movie also falsely shows Johnny Cash giving Dylan at the 1965 festival advice about whether to go sing an electric set there. However, Cash didn’t attend the 1965 festival, even though Cash was friends with Dylan and was on record supporting every major new direction Dylan made in his songwriting. So, for the movie to show visually that Cash encouraged Dylan’s foray into the world of electric rock music is not totally far-fetched.

Arguably, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN makes Dylan out to be more of a jerk than he really is. At one point, Joan Baez tells Dylan, “You’re kind of an a-hole, Bob.” Dylan’s affair with Joan would seem to support that viewpoint, but the movie’s timeline on the 1964 affair is suspect. Also, shortly after he started living with his first adult girlfriend in 1962, she and her mother took off for a six month educational trip to Europe. Then, after she returned, she became pregnant and had an abortion. Their relationship did not survive the separation and the abortion. She moved out of their apartment to live with her sister in August 1963, and they broke up in early 1964, before Dylan began his affair with Baez. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN eliminates these details and doesn’t use the girlfriend’s real name.

The history that the movie really leaves out, however, are Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger’s communist leanings. Later in his life, Seeger played down his Communist Party membership in the 1930s and 40s. However, throughout his career he promoted and associated with communist groups and Soviet Union communist front groups. Also, in just about every conflict between the USA and the Soviets from the 1940s to 1980s, Seeger always sided with the Soviets.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN shows Seeger in court where he’s part of a censorship case against singing Woody Guthrie’s popular song “This Land Is Your Land.” Guthrie’s song was written as a reply to Irving Berlin’s pro-American song “God Bless America,” a fact that the movie conveniently leaves out. Also, Guthrie wrote two verses for the song that were overtly anti-American. Despite all these facts, A COMPLTEE UNKNOWN shows Seeger in court mocking the case against the communist roots of Guthrie’s song by singing the song’s more innocuous lyrics. This scene, like the movie’s other parts, whitewash the communist influence over the folk revival in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, it sort of brings up the political issues, then forgets all about them, even though it diligently shows the huge impact that Dylan’s protest song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” had on the antiwar and civil rights movements.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN also has some strong foul language and references to promiscuity. So, despite the profundity and artistic beauty behind some of Dylan’s music played in the movie, A COMLETE UNKNOWN ultimately should be viewed as an excessive, somewhat superficial portrait of Bob Dylan’s early career, his personal life and the musical, cultural milieu in which they moved.