- The James Mangold directed feature will focus on the controversy that surrounded Dylan’s switch to electric instruments in 1965
- Edward Norton, Boyd Holbrook, Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro will also star
- ‘A Complete Unknown’ arrives in cinemas on Christmas Day
One of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films is nearing it’s release date and, finally, we now have a trailer for the Timothée Chalamet led Bob Dylan biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown’.
The biopic, directed by James Mangold (Walk The Line, 3:10 To Yuma) will focus on Dylan’s controversial switch to electric instrumentation in 1965, which saw sections of his fans turn against him, most famously at the Newport Folk Festival of that year. The screenplay, which Mangold co-wrote with Jay Cocks (Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence) is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book ‘Dylan Goes Electric!’.
Alongside Chalamet, Ed Norton will star as legendary American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro plays the great Joan Baez, Elle Fanning takes on the role of Dylan’s then-girlfriend and muse Sylvie Russo and Boyd Holbrook plays Johnny Cash.
Chalamet has dropped a couple of teasers for the film on his Instagram in recent months, and left the full trailer on his account yesterday, captioned simply ‘A Complete Unknown’. At the time of writing the post has already amassed over 775,000 likes and almost 6,000 comments.
‘A Complete Unknown’ – a title which borrows from the lyrics of Dylan’s seminal ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ – lands in US cinemas on December 25th of this year, if you fancy setting some time aside on Christmas Day, post-turkey and presents, to go watch a potential Oscar contender. Or you could just listen to ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ and ‘Blonde on Blonde’ in preparation for a viewing in that weird week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day where nobody really knows what day or date it is.
Dylan was heralded as the spokesman of a generation following the releases of ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ and ‘The Times They Are-a Changin”, but for some sections of his audience, a departure from his solely acoustic sound in ’65 was a betrayal of his folk rock principles. On one particularly infamous night in Manchester, a crowd member screamed “Judas!” at Dylan for his integration of electric instruments into his recordings.
However, the folk icon’s output in this era is regarded by many as some of the most albums ever recorded, with his first electric-incorporated record ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ featuring timeless classics such as ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, ‘Maggie’s Farm’, ‘Mr.Tambourine Man’, ‘It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’ and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’.
‘A Complete Unknown’ will be the first big screen biopic about Dylan since 2007’s ‘I’m Not There’ by Todd Haynes, which saw Cate Blanchett receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Julianne Moore, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Michelle Williams also starred in the film.
