Because the music sounds good, A Complete Unknown finds a way to win our hearts. It doesn’t attempt to say anything new about Dylan, to foreground some dramatic arc in his biography we haven’t already been exposed to. It’s more interested in transporting the audience to a time and place that yielded the creative flourishing of one of the greatest American artists. 

Mangold knows the music in his film is good, which is why so much of its runtime is musical numbers. Chalamet sounds like Chalamet doing Dylan, but somehow that works and it doesn’t take long to start bobbing your head to his songs. Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, has a stunning voice. She’s easy on the eyes, very easy on the ears, and watching her and Chalamet duet is certainly effective in tapping into whatever emotional or historical connection an audience member has to this music. 

The film has a story, and the center of it can be found when Dylan sings “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at the Newport Folk Festival. During that scene, the camera cuts to different onlookers as Chalamet delivers the iconic chorus. The lyrics take on new meaning for each one: for Sylvie/Suze, she knows Bob’s newfound fame means their relationship won’t last; for Pete Seeger, he knows Bob won’t remain tethered to the folk tradition that initially brought them together; for Bob, he knows he’s about to set the musical world on fire. It’s all a bit obvious, as to be expected from Mangold, but still an effective way to ground the seemingly transcendent within the context of this particular story. Which is: in the 1960s a funny looking dude arrives to Greenwich Village and he sings and smokes and fucks and fights. Amidst all that, a turbulent history marches on, and somewhere in the mix musical genius emerges.