You wouldn’t be making a movie about the chaotic life of Bob Dylan without hitting a few twists and turns along the way, would you? At least that’s how co-writer/director James Mangold felt about all the walls the world threw at him as he was trying to get “A Complete Unknown” off the ground. First it was the COVID-19 pandemic, then it was the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, plus all the schedules of talent shifting as a result, but through it all, Mangold refused to relent. In fact, as he shared at the first screening of the film on Wednesday, November 20 on the Fox lot in Los Angeles, were it not for these events, the film might not hold the magic that it does in capturing a time, place, and enigma of a man.
“In all honesty, it ended up being a blessing, the delays we had from COVID and the strikes, in the sense that not only Timmy, but Monica and Boyd and everyone who was involved in the movie making music had this massive amount of time,” said Mangold. “Timmy brought his guitar on ‘Dune’ to wherever they went and then all the other movies and then England on ‘Wonka’ and he was working on this on the side the whole time and the point was never about becoming a virtuoso guitar player or singer, but the point was that we were making was a movie about music in which the most critical component of this kind of music is its authenticity. Folk music in and of itself is about feeling the breath and the life of the storyteller only supported by singing, guitar, and that the beauty of it is partly the minimal nature of it and that it’s so exposing just the soul of the singer and the song, and it’s not about a kind of technical perfection.”
Elle Fanning was also on hand to offer her thoughts on the process and getting to play one of the few wholly original characters, Dylan’s first love Sylvie. While more representative than historically accurate, she’s in large part based on Dylan’s early girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who’s featured on the cover of his second studio album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” In explaining Sylvie’s connection to Dylan and how it speaks to larger themes at play, Fanning broke down why she thought they were destined to drift apart.
“I just think the evolution of their story is quite beautiful because they’re actually both completely going in different directions. So it’s heartbreaking, but it’s bittersweet. I think she knows that for herself, she has to let him go in order for him to flourish,” Fanning said of Dylan and Sylvie’s relationship. “I mean, it’s the cliches of that, but it is true and and she knew him before the success and loved him before that and knew he was talented and knew he was a genius before all of that. She was also someone — Suze and our Sylvie — she didn’t want the spotlight. That wasn’t really her thing and she was a very private person and so I think when he became quite famous, dealing with that was quite hard and not really the life that she necessarily wanted.”
The film’s Joan Baez, Monica Barbaro, was also in attendance for the post-screening Q&A and opened up about the emotional volleying she went through between first auditioning in 2020, ultimately landing the part in 2023, and shooting the following year. Echoing Mangold’s sentiments, Barbaro did find the extra time a “benefit” in terms of fully embracing Baez’s spirit and confidence.
“The confidence piece of it was a really interesting journey because Joan, she talks about having a lot of anxiety on stage, but she also is supremely confident,” Barbaro told the crowd. “And she said so, she told me that she was and she really was confident in her voice, as she should be, so I just had to trick my brain into believing that it was even remotely good at all, just for the sake of playing her, for the sake of stepping into a body of a person who believes in their voice, and that was incredibly challenging.”
Arianne Phillips, the film’s costume designer, worked previously with Mangold on his first musical biopic, “Walk the Line,” and was struck by how “A Complete Unknown” captures only a brief moment in Dylan’s life compared to the previous film’s coverage of Johnny Cash’s story. Rather than view it as a hindrance, she allowed herself to get more granular, focusing less on shifts in time and more on shifts Dylan experienced.
“Usually the trajectory of the story is from birth to death,” said Phillips. “It’s a large swath and this was four years, so I felt that in terms of costume, and hair and makeup as well, that we really had an opportunity and a responsibility to show this growth, this four year journey that Bob took from showing up in New York in search of Woody Guthrie, this 19 year old kid, and I felt that technology, cars, they’re not gonna really change in our story like most biopics. So being able to tell the story over time through Bob’s silhouette and doing that research really had reverence for me.”
The film’s production designer, François Audouy, felt similarly about being able to dive deeper into the detail of living in New York City at this time within the community Dylan would soon come to define, especially after learning he’d have more time to prepare than he initially thought.
“I really fell in love with the idea of Greenwich Village in 1961, like a neighborhood that was full of artists and poets and jazz musicians and sculptors all living together, going to the same coffee shops, the same jazz clubs and folk cafes and everything,” Audouy said. “So for me, I got to go beneath the surface research, the obsessiveness, the books and the coffee table books — and I’ve read every single book and bought every single everything that I could find — but to really start to connect with the subtlety, the emotional subtext of what it must have felt like to be alive back then and to be walking down the street and hearing and smelling and feeling this world.”
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