A Complete Unknown
I think Jord pretty much nailed it in his summation of A Complete Unknown being plain. Although, on the continuum of ugly to plain to beautiful, I think this movie certainly borders on being ugly. Outside of Timothee Chalamet’s admittedly great performance as Bob Dylan, this biopic is so ridiculously surface level, it’s maddening. Two and a half hours of Timothee Chalamet performing Bob Dylan songs is apparently good enough to win you a Best Picture nominee. People’s blinders for these music biopics is insane. Maestro, Elvis, Bohemian Rhapsody… all massively overrated by what I can only chalk up to nostalgia. If you love Bob Dylan, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. But if you’re at all critical of film, this will be disappointing.
-Z
Sorry, Academy, you've misjudged this one. As a lover of '60s music and culture, I was really excited about this release, but this left a lot to be desired. A telling of Bob Dylan's origin story, a peak behind the curtain into the conflict and controversies in his life, or an exploration of how he brought together folk and rock music throughout his career would have made for a much better story, but by instead dipping a toe into a tiny sliver of each of these, the end result feels incredibly surface level. I guess this matches with the title as I feel like Dylan continues to be an unknown entity here - was that the point?
-E
“You can be beautiful or you can be ugly but you can't be plain?” - Bob
The iconic quote from the film which I loved. The irony of it is that we have just that in a movie. It is the definition of plain. A movie that pushes no boundaries. The goal seems to show how controversial Bob Dylan was and avoided any hard hitting issues. No talks of drugs, seemed to avoid a lot of conflict despite having multiple women in his life, and they allude to his internal struggle despite me never feeling it once. I am actually a little offended at how many awards this is going to be nominated for as there are so many films that push boundaries and give cinema its magic, but we will focus on this film. I did not know much about Bob Dylan nor do I now want to learn anymore. My brother said it best when he said he could have ‘watched’ this movie in about one article from a Google search on his life. I want to learn something about him and I want to see what it was like in his shoes. Don’t get me wrong, it's not a bad movie in any world, but if I am sitting here wondering if The Fire Inside is better than this, I think we have some issues. Lastly, I think it is interesting that Timothee Chalamet is doing the inverse Austin Butler. Austin does Elvis, gets huge, and now he gives great performances in a wide variety of films where Timothee started that way and now seems to potentially be selling out with Wonka to now this. I am curious to see how his career continues. With that being said, I think he deserves a nomination, but beyond that all other nominations are a stretch.
-J
