How do you make a movie about an artist whose mythology is so vast and malleable that it defies definition? It’s what makes Bob Dylan both an impossible subject as well as one worthy of endless cinematic speculation. As James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown hits cinemas, we round up five movies that have tackled the legacy of one of music’s most enigmatic artists.
Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There (dir. Todd Haynes, 2007)
I’m Not There (dir. Todd Haynes, 2007)
A master of the transgressive, Todd Haynes’ portrait of Dylan was never going to follow the rules. Though I’m Not There casts six different actors to play six of the musician’s shifting personas (Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Ben Whishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin), in many ways it captures the fluidity of Dylan’s artistic identity more authentically than any fiction feature could.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2005)
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2005)
If you’re a Dylan newbie and worried about going into A Complete Unknown blind, there’s no better place to start than Martin Scorsese’s three and a half hour documentary on the musician’s artistic evolution from folk singer to voice of the people to rock star between 1961 and 1966.
Don’t Look Back (dir. D. A. Pennebaker, 1967)
Don’t Look Back (dir. D. A. Pennebaker, 1967)
Legendary music documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker’s greatest work is his chronicle of Dylan’s final tour before going electric, with the 24 year-old performing solo on stages around England with nothing but an acoustic guitar. The movie serves as an intimate and unflinching document on a young, introspective, cocky, chain-smoking Dylan on the cusp of greatness.
A Complete Unknown (dir. James Mangold, 2024)
A Complete Unknown (dir. James Mangold, 2024)
Despite its title, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown doesn’t quite embrace Dylan’s infamous unknowability with the same imaginativeness that Haynes did with I’m Not There, instead following the same, sometimes tiring formula that the director helped popularise with his Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line (2005). The film is saved by a typically great performance by Timotheè Chalamet as Dylan, and, of course, a handful of rocking music cues.
Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis (dir. Coen Brothers, 2013)
Inside Llewyn Davis (dir. Coen Brothers, 2013)
Ok, so Inside Llewyn Davis may only feature a few seconds cameo by Dylan (Ben Pike) in the film’s closing scene, but his inevitability looms large over the story of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a struggling folk-singer vying for a record deal only a short time before Dylan would storm through the doors and revolutionise the genre forever.
A Complete Unknown is out now in UK cinemas.
