If you want a quick explanation of A Complete Unknown, here it is. A Complete Unknown has two levels. The first is Bob Dylan’s journey into and out of the folk scene. Initially, it’s something he wants to be part of. But then he discovers the obligations and responsibilities that come with participating in, leading, a community. Ultimately, he goes his own way, free of those burdens.
The second level is about the role music plays in shaping politics and culture. I think that’s where most of the film’s depth is, so let’s start there.
Like I say in pretty much every explanation, everything you need to know about the movie is contained in the contrast between how it starts and how it ends.
- Beginning: Pete Seeger is in court, facing judgment, because a congressman didn’t like a song. How does he respond to being found guilty? He plays the song. The judge is angry, the crowd applauds.
- Middle: Bob Dylan becomes the leader of folk music, replacing Seeger, thanks to his politically-charged songs.
- Ending: Dylan is on stage, facing judgment, because Seeger and other folk leaders don’t like a song. How does Dylan respond? He plays the song.
Dylan’s electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival parallels Seeger’s day in court. Why? What does that mean?
The metaphor of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger
Parallels are a powerful technique in storytelling, because they convey association. Even though Dylan isn’t literally on trial the way Seeger was, because the film establishes the parallel between the characters and the scenes, the latter scene at Newport carries the subtext of the earlier one. Which means Newport is a trial.
That also highlights the irony and hypocrisy of Seeger being the one who doesn’t want Dylan to perform with an electric guitar. What did Seeger say at court (and multiple other times)?
- Seeger: Your honor, you may know of a friend of mine, Woody Guthrie. A great songwriter and a great American. And Woody’s not well. But he’s been much on my mind as I’ve been going through this, because Woody once said “A good song can only do good.” And the song I’m in hot water for, here, is a good song. It’s a patriotic song, in fact. And I thought you might actually want to hear the words, and I can play it for you.”
- Outside the courthouse, to a crowd of reporters: I offered to play a song for the judge up there, but he didn’t want to hear it. But I feel like singing, so I’m going to sing it for you. You know the words…
Later, when Seeger tries to talk Dylan into performing with acoustic, how does the conversation go?
- Seeger: Bobby, we built Newport for the purpose of sharing traditional folk music. It started six years ago, and every year since then, more and more people have been showing up, and they’re bringing their teaspoons. Teaspoons for justice, and teaspoons for peace, and teaspoons for love. And that’s what we do. Gosh, you showed up, Bobby, and damnit if you didn’t bring a shovel…. Thanks to you, we’re almost there. We’re on the verge of tipping it, Bob. And you’re our closing act. And tonight, if you can just get up there one more time, and use that shovel the right way, you could level things out, Bob.
- Dylan: The right way? You know, I sent you an advance of my new record.
- Seeger: Sure, yeah, sure. I got it.
- Dylan: Did you ever listen to the music you’re telling me not to play?
- Seeger: I can see the direction you’re going in. I could see it in the last record. You know, it’s not—Don’t take it that way. Bobby, you write great songs that are leading to change. And we’re a folk festival, why is this controversial?
- Dylan: You don’t understand, they just want me singing “Blowing in the Wind” all alone for the rest of my goddamn life.
Notice the parallel. “I thought you might actually want to hear the words” versus “Did you ever listen to the music you’re telling me not to play?” The same way Seeger had represented a cultural shift that scared the United States government, Dylan embodies a cultural shift that scares Seeger. Seeger has become the judge, stuck in the old ways. The Newport Folk Festival is the courtroom.
If Seeger (as portrayed in the film) really believed a good song can only do good, he would have stood by Dylan. His words were right, but he failed to practice what he preached.
Through these characters, A Complete Unknown captures the social upheaval of the 1960s that continues to define the United States to this day. The traditional values that had been the foundation of the country since its inception could not survive the fallout from two World Wars, the Vietnam War, inhumane racial discrimination, and the assassinations of important figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. You know, all the things Dylan was writing and singing about.
James Mangold uses Seeger to represent the simplicity and wholesomeness of a bygone idealism. And Dylan epitomizes the disaffectedness of not only his generation but the generations to follow. In that way, A Complete Unknown isn’t just about “back then” but right now. There will always be someone older saying “Do things our way.” And there will always be someone younger who says, “No.”
A good song can only do good. But the idea of what defines a good song will evolve. You can fight that (and lose) or embrace it.
Dylan didn’t want play old songs
In the previous dialogue, Dylan mentions how people just want him to sing “Blowing in the Wind” for the rest of his life. That’s a continuation from when he was on tour with Joan Baez. She tries to play “Wind” and Dylan says no. He wants to play new music and nothing else.
- Dylan: They already got that song on the record, pick another song.
- Baez: You guys want to hear “Blowing in the Wind”, right? It’s why they came here, Bob.
- Dylan: No, I don’t believe they came here to hear that song, because I don’t believe the set list was advertised. Unless that draconian figure from Chicago, United States up there promised songs that weren’t gonna be played. Nah, man, it’s not a request-type concert. If you want to do that, go see Donovan. But here, uh, we’re gonna play new songs.
Baez then starts playing “Blowing in the Wind” so Dylan says his guitar’s broken and leaves. The movie positions Baez as part of Seeger’s folk cohort. She, like Seeger, is part of that clinging to history that Dylan refuses to be part of. He rejected his own history when he took his stage name and re-wrote his biography (like traveling with a circus). And rejects their history as well.
Because A Complete Unknown takes the time to, right up front, connect music to politics, Dylan’s refusal to play old music is a refusal to be part of old politics, old traditions. To accept labels. His ambition for artistic freedom echoed a broader desire for cultural freedom. While people like Seeger and Baez (in the movie, not in real life) were content with how things were. The characters had grown complacent.
That’s why the final song Dylan sings is “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
- Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
- Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
- The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
- Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
- Strike another match, go start anew
- And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
The text, context, and subtext of every line is “the past is gone, you have to look ahead.” If you hang on to the baggage of the past, you’ll never move forward. Burn the past, begin again.
So Dylan not wanting to play old songs is part of the larger dynamic we already discussed between Dylan and Seeger.
What about Dylan and Woody Guthrie at the end?
Mangold has two influential figures in Dylan’s life. Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. “Wait, Chris, what about Pete Seeger?” Seeger played a huge role in Dylan’s ascendancy. But the film positions Dylan as more of a Guthrie Guy than a Seeger Stan. Just look at that first scene in the hospital where Dylan gushes to Woody then catches himself and compliments Pete, too. It’s more polite than earnest.
That’s why when Seeger asks Dylan to play acoustic, Dylan doesn’t listen. But when Johnny Cash offers his guitar to play a folk encore, Dylan accepts and performs “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
The film has Cash be the ultimate rebel. Multiple times, Mangold uses Cash as a plot device to justify Dylan’s own rebellion, including playing electric at Newport. So it’s meaningful when Cash of all people is the one essentially saying “One song won’t kill you.”
It’s not like Dylan suddenly hated folk music and everyone involved. He simply wanted to move forward as an artist and not be beholden to his or anyone else’s past. But he makes the concession and plays one traditional song (which wasn’t even old—it came out in January and the Newport festival was in July).
That brings us to Guthrie. The other person Dylan looks to for guidance. Bob’s time in the folk scene started with Guthrie’s approval in the film’s first act. He goes back to Guthrie, after Newport, to face true judgement. Everyone at Newport had told him if he played electric, it would kill the folk revival. Aware of that, Dylan tries to return Guthrie’s harmonica, feeling like he’s no longer suited to carry it.
And what does Guthrie do? He passes it back. While Seeger was scared of change, Guthrie isn’t so precious. The harmonica is essentially the torch. And by not taking it back, Guthrie gives Dylan permission to represent the future of folk, but as Dylan sees fit. Free from expectation. And that’s why we end with Dylan on his motorcycle, on the open road, someone without a home, a rolling stone.
The real beginning and end
For the sticklers out there. A Complete Unknown doesn’t begin with Seeger’s trial but Dylan’s arrival to New York City and his sojourn to Woody Guthrie’s hospital room. It ends with Dylan leaving Woody Guthrie’s hospital room.
So even though I took some liberties at the beginning of the article to more easily get to the point, the whole “the contrast between the beginning and the ending explains everything” still stands.
At the beginning, Dylan has no connection to folk. He’s just a kid. An outsider. Which is what we see at the bar. The guys debating at a corner table are part of the scene. By the end of the film, Dylan has become the scene. When he leaves Guthrie’s hospital room, it’s with Guthrie’s blessing, with Guthrie’s harmonica (not just to borrow but to keep). Where Dylan goes, so goes folk. If that means electric, so be it. If that means something else entirely, so be it. Dylan’s free to do as he wants. The movement isn’t just one thing, one way, for eternity. It’s each individual doing their best to write a good song, whatever that means to them.
If you want to get real granular. The first shot of Dylan is in the back of a car. A passenger. At the end, he’s driving himself. That’s the movie. And it’s a question to ask yourself. Are you comfortable being a passenger? Or do you want to drive? If you want to drive, what’s stopping you? Pick up your guitar (whatever that means to you) and start playing what you want to hear.
I would argue that was also part of the cultural shift of the 60s. Everyone went from “What can I do for my country” to a post-Kennedy world where the pursuit of self-actualization and independence became the norm.
In the words of James Mangold
I usually use quotes from the director to support my argument. Why? Because some people find that important. And what the director says often matches what I wrote. So it’s a win-win. But it wouldn’t be fair to readers like yourself if I only included quotes where I was right and never ones that challenged my analysis.
With that said, it’s not like Mangold has a completely different take than me. But someone reading the quotes might think he rejects “the large themes, like changing music and realigning the dynamic and cultural shifts.” He says, “none of that is what was driving those characters, in my opinion.”
I’ll point you to the second interview with Forbes. He clarifies a bit, saying that figures like Bob do “become a turning point and cultural inflection point.” He continues, “I’m not arguing all of that may be true, but it wasn’t true for the players that night [at Newport].” Which gets back to something he said to Variety: “My way of making a movie…is to kind of really focus on the deeply personal.”
I would argue Mangold isn’t rejecting the film’s possessing larger themes about Dylan as a cultural figure. Rather, he’s stating that he focuses, first and foremost, on the humanity of the characters. So he films the Newport electric controversy not as a huge cultural moment but as a family fight on Thanksgiving. Movies like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and Elvis kind of go the opposite direction. They’re very aware of what Queen means, what Elton John means, what Elvis means. Those films embrace presenting story beats in a way that aggrandize cultural impact and legacy. They’re amusement park rides for fans. There’s nothing wrong with that. But Mangold’s approach is different, which is why his film feels less commercial. More like a dive bar than a Wolfgang Puck airport restaurant. But that doesn’t mean broader themes don’t exist in any way, shape, or form.
With all that said, here are some of the quotes.
Mangold told Variety:
It starts with suffocating and then running, and rebirthing or building anew. And any casual observer of Bob Dylan’s life can see that that has been something that’s happened more than once, not even in just the period that I chose to depict in this film. But that’s very much the reason, coming from that talk with Bob, that the movie opens with him at the station, hitchhiking into New York, and ends with him on the back of a motorcycle, riding away. The arrival at the opening is a departure from the world he left, and the departure at the end is an arrival to a new world and, in a way, a new period of his life. That to me was really clear, that cyclical, almost musical-ballad-like pattern in his life….
Then to add to that, the story itself, whether it was about Bob or not, is about things I’m very interested in, like tribalism in the arts or in philosophy. It’s about how people get so locked in to a dedication to, in this case, what folk music is or isn’t that it becomes an act of disloyalty to play with a band. It’s also about limitations that feel arbitrary, or that kind of theology, if you will, that is imposed on an artist that might cause an artist that has contrarian impulses or broader ambitions to act out against it.
My way of making a movie, both as a writer and as a director, is to kind of really focus on the deeply personal — the local, if you will — and to really not get distracted at all by the large themes, like changing music and realigning the dynamic and cultural shifts. None of that is what was driving those characters, in my opinion — or at least it couldn’t be in a dramatization.
To Forbes:
One of the things that happens with iconic artistic figures like Bob is that every move they make and everything that happened along the timeline of their career becomes a turning point and cultural inflection point.
I’m not arguing all of that may be true, but it wasn’t true for the players that night. They didn’t feel like they were changing the course of culture, nor did Bob when he got a band in the studio. I got from Bob that these things came from very primal human feelings, like the whole blow-up at Newport. It was effectively some kind of Thanksgiving or holiday dinner family implosion like any other we might experience. These people had all been living under each other’s rules, edicts, and philosophies, and the Prodigal son might have had just about enough of what Dad told him he could or couldn’t say or do anymore. That whole thing became a bit of acting out as much as anything else.”
One bit that stands out to me is at the end of the Forbes interview. Where Mangold says: These people had all been living under each other’s rules, edicts, and philosophies, and the Prodigal son might have had just about enough of what Dad told him he could or couldn’t say or do anymore. I think that calls back to the parallel we initially discussed. What was Seeger’s trial but an example of rebelling against rules, edicts, and philosophies? Dylan’s electric set is the same act, but it’s a rebellion against society rather than government.
Cast
- Bob Dylan – Timotheé Chalamet
- Pete Seeger – Edward Norton
- Toshi Seeger – Eriko Hatsune
- Woody Guthrie – Scoot McNairy
- Sylvie Russo (Suze Rotolo) – Elle Fanning
- Joan Baez – Monica Barbano
- Johnny Cash – Boyd Holbrook
- Albert Grossman – Dan Fogler
- Mike Bloomfield – Eli Brown
- Jesse Moffette – Big Bill Morganfield
- Al Kooper – Charlie Tahan
- Alan Lomax – Norbert Leo Butz
- Based on – the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald
- Written by – James Mangold | Jay Cocks
- Directed by – James Mangold
