A Complete Unknown

 

The first time I became aware of Bob Dylan was probably around 1966. I was working a summer job as the municipal swimming pool's custodian. Yeah, I was the guy who was responsible for turning on the chlorine tank every morning and tossing in shovel loads of alum to make sure the daily pH levels of the water met public safety standards with the litmus paper tests I took.

Yep, your summer health depended on the responsible nature of a 16-year-old nonscientist high school sophomore throwing chemicals into your germ-infested community pool.

I was also the guy who cleaned out the locker rooms with Pine Sol and every evening picked up the trash you left behind on the grounds with a spear stick and a baggie.

But I had the place to myself. It was the best job I ever had.

Anyway, I'd amuse myself by turning on the PA system and listen to either records (we had a pool turntable) or the radio while I was working. And my music tastes were changing. I was slowly graduating from The Lettermen and the Tijuana Brass to The Beatles and Rolling Stones.

That's probably when I first heard "Blowin' in the Wind." Only it wasn't Dylan singing. It was Peter, Paul and Mary, who often served as a more commercial vehicle to Dylan's gravel-voiced delivery. And it was the lyrics that hit me like an arrow to the heart. In 1966, we were moving deeper and deeper into the anti-Vietnam War era and I was approaching draft age. The Civil Rights movement was also taking foot, so for me, Dylan's transformative lyrics – the ether of his words – truly meant something.

I bring this up in the wake of the current Dylan movie biopic, "A Complete Unknown," which traces the early years of Dylan's influential life.

You have to be careful with movie biopics: they edit, delete, change and/or invent stuff to move the narrative. You need to know that going in because movies only have two hours or so to tell a story. Having said that, there's been some really entertaining biopics out there. My short list includes "The Glenn Miller Story," "The Buddy Holly Story," "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Walk The Line," (directed by James Mangold, who also directed the current Dylan flick), "Elvis" and "Bohemian Rhapsody."

You can add "A Complete Unknown" to that list.

The cast is astounding. Timothée Chalamet portrays Dylan so well, you can't even understand all his mumbles. (which might be a technical issue with the production. Or not). Monica Barbaro is brilliant as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook nails it as Johnny Cash. But perhaps the best supporting nod, I think, goes to Edward Norton as Pete Seeger as he tries to mentor the youthful and rebellious Dylan through the bohemian hills and dales of the early 1960's folk music culture. I didn't know Seeger was that influential.

I was further taken in when I learned that all the primary actors did their own singing and played their own instruments. That, to me, is worth the price of admission alone. Some critics have suggested that Chalamet does Dylan better than Dylan. And Chalamet's duets with Barbaro were remarkable. All done live. No dubbing.

It's hard to determine what the plot of the movie is. Again, some critics have asked why this movie even exists at all (kind of harsh there, I think). There is some triangular conflict when Dylan's girlfriend, Sylvie Russo (a pseudonym for the real life Suze Rotolo, who shared the "Freewheelin' with Bob Dylan" album cover with Dylan) and Baez that comes and goes with some feelings getting hurt, so bad on you, Bob.

But through it all, the movie seems to be taking us to the place where Dylan (Is he folk? Is he rock? Is he blues? Is he country? What exactly is he?) abandons his acoustic guitar and goes electric. This iconic moment apparently happened at the chaotic 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and drew the ire of fans and festival organizers alike, including Seeger). Shouts of "traitor!" littered the stage, as well as some actual litter thrown at him during his performance.

There is some question about that. YouTube video clips don't make it seem all that bad. There is some booing, but to my ear, not much. And were they booing because of a poor sound system, or were they booing the short three-song set he played? It's your call. A year later, in Manchester, England (and not shown in the movie), someone shouted "Judas!" and Dylan replied with "You're a liar!" and asked his backup band to play even louder.

I came out of the theater simply amazed and with a warmly renewed awe for Dylan, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Before 1961, nobody, absolutely nobody, heard lyrics like Dylan's in music before.

It kind of made me wonder to whom does Dylan, now 83, pass the folk tradition torch? Woody Guthrie handed off to Pete Seeger, who handed off to Bob Dylan, who handed off to ... Bruce Springsteen? Jason Isbell? Taylor Swift? Pfft.

Who raises our consciousness now, especially when we need it most? 

The times they are a-changin'... still.