A Cold Monday Night With Dylan
A Complete Unknown is an unknown known
We rocked up to a damp North East London suburb on a cold Monday evening. Everything was a shade of grey punctuated by areas of orange street lighting sparkling up the drizzle and red car stoplights flicking on and off like strobes along the long thread of crawling traffic.
The main road past the side of the cinema may be officially designated a Major Trunk Road but it was first laid down in 1697 so it’s narrow and winding. Dual carriageways were less of a requirement for the occasional stagecoach back then. The maximum speed limit of 20mph along its route is more of an aspiration than a road law. You won’t find any police speed cameras here.
This might sound like the last place you’d want to be on a chilly wet evening but Mrs M and I ignored all this gloom as we were there for a damn good reason. The new Bob Dylan biographical musical drama film A Complete Unknown was showing at the local cinema.
You see, Monday is discount day so it’s only five quid entry at the Forest Cinema, an independent cinema here in Walthamstow, a couple of miles from our London home. Mondays are therefore our cinema days. We’re careful about our money that way – some may say tight.
Sometimes Mrs M chooses the Monday film and sometimes I do. This Monday was my choice. Obviously.
I would have paid a whole lot more to see a Bob Dylan film with lots of Dylan music, especially one based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald. Dylan going electric was one of the most iconic and transformative moments in popular music.
But I didn’t have to pay more because it was Monday which means I can use the savings to see more films and and buy more records. Result.
Are you seated comfortably?
Mrs M, who suffers my 1960s pop music obsession with admirable fortitude, and I were seated comfortably in a warm cinema screen room with huge luxurious large red seats in this fantastic Forest Cinema. You may ask why a London cinema is named Forest. That’s because this borough on the north-east corner of our city contains much of the 6,000-acre ancient Royal Epping Forest.
It’s not all grey buildings, nose-to-bumper traffic and roads built 300 years ago here. Besides, Walthamstow comes from the old English Wilcumestowe which means place of welcome. These days that seems to refer only to the Forest cinema but we’ll take what we can get. Plus there’s the discount.
Out of the cold, a gigantic curved screen filled most of the front of room 9 and a wonderful sound system blared out; a pre-requisite for a rock music film. And for a Star Trek film. Any film really.
The title of this latest Dylan film comes of course from the line before the hook on Like A Rolling Stone. The makers used the line to describe the enigmatic Dylan we see in the film although the line and much of the song itself was really Dylan’s caustically poetic rant against everyone who annoyed him at the time including an ex-girlfriend.
Once we get through 30 minutes of adverts and trailers, we start with a 20-year-old Dylan being dropped off in New York City having journeyed from Minnesota. His previous years are largely an enigma. He spins tales of how he learnt guitar from cowboys while working in carnivals and circuses and, although he uses the surname Dylan, his girlfriend only finds out it’s Zimmerman when he receives a package.
He does not explain anything to her but the scene provides an early example of his quest for fame. Dylan is a brilliant stage name in the same way that Elton John switched from Reg Dwight and Richard Starkey is Ringo Starr.
The story
Although we follow several of Dylan’s relationships, for a music person like me the story was all about the build-up to Dylan going electric at The Newport Folk Festival, the classic album Highway 61 Revisted and that sound on Like A Rolling Stone. These events were an earthquake moment in contemporary music.
I tried not to bother Mrs M too much at key moments but when Al Kooper appeared on screen, I knew what was coming and got a bit carried away and couldn’t help but nudge her and tell her what was coming.
It was a spell-binding scene that replicated how, almost by accident, Dylan arrived at that ground-breaking organ riff and sound for Like A Rolling Stone. He’d been trying for several weeks to get it right although the film didn’t show that. I guess that could be a film in its own right.
There were a couple of niggles as there always are. I disengaged for a bit during the shouts of Judas at the scenes at the Newport Folk Festival since this did not happen there.
Anyone who knows about popular music and culture will know this happened a little later on his UK tour at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966. It’s one of the most famous heckling moments in rock history and whilst this might seem a minor point for some, it kills the moment for music nerds like me.
A second and bigger niggle is that Dylan didn’t go electric out of thin air as seemed to happen in the film. A major influence for him going electric was probably The Beatles and to a lesser extent the wider British Invasion. We did hear the Kinks in the background at one point which hinted at his new direction but nothing of The Beatles' earlier move into electric folk for some of the Help and Rubber Soul tracks that had a big influence on his eventual musical direction
And, of course, the Byrds were also highly instrumental in his change of direction by covering his songs electrically and arguably better.
Dylan was facing competition from all sides and was in danger of losing relevance as a performing artist. The film failed to show this which was a large omission.
However, those points aside, A Complete Unknown otherwise masterfully makes several fascinating points about Dylan and great artists generally. We see Dylan’s self-centred selfishness necessary to focus on his work and the effects of fame thrust onto young shoulders.
We see his obsession with writing, even getting out of bed where he was with his girlfriend in the middle of the night to put down his ideas. Details such as hearing Peter, Paul and Mary singing Puff The Magic Dragon in one scene gave us a flavour of the smug and antiseptic direction some folk music was going before Dylan stepped in to save the day.
We see how other artists, such as Johnny Cash, understood and encouraged Dylan’s iconoclastic nature and style that made him into a music legend but how most of the others including record companies, the Newport Folk Festival board and many although not all of the audiences, didn’t appreciate that one of popular music’s greatest and historical moments was happening right in front of them.
Magical.
The players
Timothy Chamolet in the lead was incredible. I was carried along with his Dylan. Mrs M, for whom English is not her native tongue, understood nothing he said; Chamolet had perfected the Dylan mumbled drawl.
She’s fluent in London English and Cockney though which is pretty impressive when you think about it. She’s less fluent in Dylanesque.
With my guitarist head on, it looked very much to me that Chamolet was playing the guitar himself and he did an excellent job. Even more impressive, he sang all the songs himself well very and he managed to sound like Dylan but without all Dylan's bum notes and out-of-tune bits. He couldn’t match the Dylan snarl but who can?
On the negative side, Boyd Holbrook didn’t convince as Johnny Cash but had a smaller part so I could let it wash past.
Edward Norton was superb as the conservative folkie Pete Seeger and Dylan father figure. He also appeared to be playing the banjo and singing himself. I can’t testify to the accuracy of his voice as it was a little before my time and he was fairly unknown in the UK but it worked for me.
Monica Barbaro played Joan Baez. I understand she’s fairly unknown but you wouldn’t have guessed. She learnt to sing for the film and even though she doesn’t sound like Baez, she was so good it didn’t matter. She also learnt to play guitar for the film.
She was astonishing and her duets with Chamolet’s Dylan were stunning. If she doesn’t make it in films, she could be a pop star. Or both. Him too.
A complete unknown known
This is a great film and even the ever-critical Mrs M enjoyed it despite not understanding anything Chamloet said because the story and the music flowed so well and the music was so great.
All in all, a couple of niggles aside, it was spellbinding. The entire audience taking advantage of the Monday discount sat through the closing credits as Chamolet’s versions of Dylan’s songs played out. No one wanted to leave although to be fair, some of that may have been due to the weather outside.
We returned home on the bus; we get free travel around London due to being of a certain age. You don’t need to spend a lot to have a great night out although now I think of it, we are a bit tight as an Uber is only about eight quid.