The Bob Dylan film “A Complete Unknown” was made with his contribution

Bob Dylan is a self-made enigma, an elusive Nobel Prize winner whose songs defined a ’60s protest movement before ushering in an indelible electric age. What is known about the man is only overshadowed by the myths that surround him.

Despite these hurdles, director James Mangold (“Ford vs. Ferrari”) immersed himself in a biography about the living legend. “A Complete Unknown” (in theaters on Christmas Day) captures the epochal four years – 1961 to 1965 – in which Minnesota’s Robert Zimmerman transformed into Bob Dylan of rock immortality. Of course, it helped that the film had the man himself along for the cinematic ride.

“Bob read the script and we met four or five times and he made himself available whenever I needed him,” says Mangold, whose film is based on the book “Dylan Goes Electric!” “Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split” from 2015 is based on the 1960s.”

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Dylan actually helped? Impressive given the singer’s legendary seclusion. Consider that the film’s star, Timothée Chalamet (who has been preparing to sing and act like Dylan for many years), only heard about his doppelgänger via social media earlier this month. “Timmy is a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’ll be completely believable as me. Or as a younger me. Or as another me,” Dylan, 83, wrote on X.

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“I have to say, he was absolutely lovable, charming and open,” emphasizes Mangold, smiling at the memory. “Maybe it was because I didn’t write a book or an article, but was just a fellow artist, not that I’m in that league. But he could see that I wasn’t picking sides to push an agenda and that I represented all the characters with respect because he loved them all.

These characters include struggling legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), Dylan-inspired girlfriend Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and banjo-playing folk icon Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), a who’s who of American social activist musicians.

For Norton, the film represents not only a glimpse into Dylan’s rise, but also a chance for younger generations to understand a pivotal moment in the country’s history. “These people were all so deeply involved in the critical social debates of their time, and that is increasingly difficult to recognize today,” he says. “I hope that through this film people will dig deeper and look into that past.”

Another key character in the drama is Dylan’s first New York girlfriend Suze Rotolo, played by Elle Fanning, who appears at Dylan’s request as a character with a different name, Sylvie Russo. Although she was not a musician, Rotolo helped fuel Dylan’s lyrical activism.

“Their relationship was pure, so I think he was protecting her,” Mangold says of Dylan’s request for a name change. “It was clear to me that he still loved Suze even though she had passed away, as she was an early love in his life before he became Bob Dylan.”

For “A Complete Unknown,” director James Mangold tried to avoid biographical tropes

Dylan has had a remarkable career trajectory, from solo troubadour to rebel rocker to devout Christian to rugged raconteur. By recounting only those early years, Mangold chose to tell the story of young lives colliding.

“A vagabond arrives in New York and reinvents himself, with $10 in his pocket and a song in his Moleskine notebook that he wants to sing for his hero (Guthrie), who is in a New Jersey hospital,” says he. “It sounds like a movie if you just describe the reality of its opening moments.”

Mangold’s film focuses on invisible sparks, such as “two people in their underwear singing ‘Blowin’ in Wind’ in Greenwich Village while there’s a garbage truck outside the window,” he says. “This moment is great for me. It’s counterintuitive when you consider the cultural impact of the song, but of course the musicians of these songs were not aware of the cultural impact when they created them.”

The cast of the Bob Dylan film learned to sing and play instruments

The main actors spent more than a year taking singing and music lessons. “I’ve played guitar, but it’s easy compared to the banjo,” Norton jokes, noting that Seeger’s claw-hammer picking technique is difficult to master.

But Norton not only learned to play the instrument, he also went out of his way to understand Seeger’s friendly, if reserved, demeanor.

“There’s a scene in the movie where Dylan reconnects with Seeger after a while, so I asked Joan (Baez), would you and Pete hug if you hadn’t seen each other?” Norton says, laughing. “She said, ‘Oh God, no! We were hippies, he was from the Depression era. That banjo was his shield.’ She described him to me as a Calvinist preacher.

Baez also helped Barbaro craft her portrayal of the singer, who was already famous (Time put her on the cover in 1962) when her relationship with the little-known Dylan took off.

“I was hesitant to approach her at first because I had put her on a pedestal,” says Barbaro, who learned guitar from scratch for the role. “But I had dreams about it and thought I had to meet her. Joan is a brave person so I thought if she were me she would come forward and I did.”

The resulting conversation helped Barbaro distance himself from Baez. “Talking to her allowed me to finally let go of the tension and tight control over doing it right and just being myself,” she says.

For Mangold, the film was about finding a new place for Bob Dylan outside of DA Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back, Martin Scorsese’s epic 2005 film No Direction Home, or Dylan’s own surrealist autobiography Chronicles: Volume One” from 2004 can be found. “

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