A Complete Unknown

Although the film is adapted from Elijah Wald's "Dylan Goes Electric!" and the narrative is based on Dylan's groundbreaking (actually farcical) electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, as a Dylan fan, what touched me most after watching "A Complete Unknown" was Sylvie Russo - yes, this is a pseudonym in the film, and she is actually Dylan's early muse, Suze Rotolo, the beautiful and playful girl on the cover of the great The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

Rock fans are familiar with the story of Suze Rotolo, including her autobiography "The Time of Letting Go", which was translated into Chinese by Chen Zhen many years ago, and Dylan's description in "Chronicles", which together outline the time that young Dylan spent in Greenwich Village, New York. Although the role of Suze was adjusted in "A Complete Unknown", such as Suze never participating in the Newport in 1965, not to mention the plot of their farewell across the iron fence, including the ambiguous description of Dylan and Suze's breakup in the movie (an important point is that Suze was pregnant with Dylan's child, and they eventually decided to abort together, which was an inevitable link in the collapse of their relationship), these adaptations in the movie partially protected Suze, and also protected Dylan, who is still alive this year at the age of 83, and Joan Baez, who is 84 years old. On the other hand, these adaptations are quite successful in my opinion, and they supplement (actually confirm) my conception of the young Dylan at that time as a Dylan fan.

There were three scenes, three times when Dylan sang, and Sylvie Russo (let's keep calling her by that name) in the audience touched me:

The first time was when Dylan sang "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." At this time, Dylan was already a rising folk star, and when he was recognized by fans, he quickly got into the car (a tribute to the Beatles' hard day life?). Sylvie, who appeared on the cover and was probably the happiest girl in Greenwich Village in the eyes of the outside world, was in the audience. She swallowed her saliva and then showed a relieved but bitter smile - at this moment, Sylvie knew that Dylan no longer belonged to him.

This was the first time I cried in the movie.

The second time, in Newport, Dylan sang The Times They Are A-Changin, with guitar, harmonica, hoarse voice, and the fans singing in chorus. This was the strong sound of the American era in the 1960s, and it was also the sound field that Dylan wanted to break away from later. At this time, the camera was given to Sylvie again. At this moment, she already knew that Dylan had created "the Dylan in everyone's mind". She knew Dylan's true character and knew that Dylan would definitely break this. Even Joan Baez in the backstage showed a meaningful expression: This bastard will not stop for anyone, including himself.

The last time, yes, is the climax of the film, It Ain't Me Babe.

In the film, Dylan and Joan Baez seem to be singing this song sweetly, But it ain't me, babe, No, no, no, it ain't me, babe, on stage like a couple, flirting, constantly denying and affirming each other - in fact, in the real world, Dylan and Joan sang this song in 1964, and in the film, it was a transplant in 1965, and the relationship between Dylan and Joan was also tangled. I like this part very much. Sylvie knew before the song was finished that Dylan was a complete jerk. Don't hold on to your illusions, let's go, don't be blinded by his talent. Although many viewers will think this is a love scene, in my opinion, Sylvie is the earliest prophet. She predicted the greatest chameleon in the history of pop music, who would use one sincere lie after another to ruthlessly betray herself again and again. Finally, what Sylvie said, "He has a lot of people to talk to," which confirms Dylan's famous saying, "For me, it's harder to sing to 50 people than to 20,000 people."

After watching the film, columnist Darryn King thought that Elle Fanning 's interpretation of Sylvie was not good (shit), but he still wrote in his Forbes article that Rotolo left "a wrenching record of the emotional costs of fame (from the perspective of a victim) and, of course, a penetrating portrait of Dylan's transformation from folk-singing jerk to, well, jerk and global icon."

You're right, Dylan is a complete asshole.

However, in the movie "Nobody", the director chose to use a simple and understandable emotional line to replace Dylan's reason for tearing off the label of being the flag bearer, and finally leading to the film. Although this adaptation seems to be dramatic, for Dylan's fans, as I said before, it is reasonable. Anyway, there is nothing we don't know about Dylan's little things. As for those viewers who are not familiar with Dylan, they may find it inexplicable, what is so interesting about the story of a scumbag, etc. This can only be a choice. Anyway, Dylan's catchphrase is, it's none of my business, I'm not there.

Complete Unknown is the best movie I have seen this year. It was very enjoyable and exciting. Timothée Chalamet performed very well. Most of the songs here were sung by him. You can tell if you have listened to Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan's voice is very bad, and Timothée Chalamet's voice is slightly better than his.

I read "Rebels from the Folk" written by Yuan Yue (Tumoto) more than ten years ago, and I read it again two years ago. This book is also very well written. Like the musicians in this movie, you can feel that the author wrote this book with great passion. This movie captures a period when Bob Dylan went from obscurity to his farewell to the folk music world. The subtitles of the movie say "based on actual events", which is generally good, but some time points have been adjusted for drama, such as the process of Dylan and Joan Baez's acquaintance. The interval in the real event was relatively long, and the beginning of their cohabitation in the movie was placed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I am not a fan of Bob Dylan. I even thought his voice was harsh when I first listened to his songs, but his lyrics are really good. A musician can only write one song like "Like a Rolling Stone" in his lifetime. Bob Dylan has written several songs. I listened to Dylan's songs very late because his voice was too discouraging. Later, I got used to it after listening to him many times.

I first learned about Dylan from the biography of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs can be said to be a die-hard fan of Dylan, so much so that I suspect that he was dating Joan Baez only because she was Dylan's ex-girlfriend.

The following is a little record of whatI read when I was reading the biography of Steve Jobs :

> The only person who could be the idol of Steve Jobs was Bob Dylan, who was also the common idol of that generation. He mentioned many times: he is my hero. From copying his albums when he was young to filling his iPod with Bob Dylan's albums, finally, hearing about him was not as good as meeting him in person. When Dylan came to the Bay Area for a concert, he specially invited Steve Jobs to the hotel for a chat. Steve Jobs was nervous and excited. He was nervous about meeting his idol, but also worried that meeting him was not as good as hearing about him, which would destroy the image in his mind.

> Fortunately, they fell in love at first sight. The two chatted for two hours (I don't know if they smoked marijuana together). Bob Dylan told him how he wrote the songs he liked: I don't know how to write them, I just wrote them down in my mind. Now I can't write them, but fortunately, I can't write them, but I can still sing them. Later, when Dylan's caravan was on tour, he passed by and asked Steve Jobs to go to the performance car and asked him which song he liked the most. He said One too many mornings. Dylan sang this song at the concert. After the concert, Dylan's caravan stopped next to Steve Jobs, opened the door, and asked in his unique duck voice: Did you hear the song I sang to you just now? After that, he opened the door and drove away. The die-hard fan Steve Jobs was left in the wind.

> It is a blessing to like such a singer, just as Joe Bangzhu said: My appreciation for Dylan's songs has grown and matured as I have grown older. It makes me understand what a creator is like. If someone's songs allow you to listen to them from childhood to middle age, and he also sings them into old age, constantly changing, how happy a fan would be.

Our generation is not so lucky. Such a genius probably only appears once every five hundred years.

This film starts with the folk revival and ends with the decline of the folk movement. It was only a few years, but Pete Seager in the film insisted on composing and performing folk songs until his death (2014). Folk songs taught Bob Dylan the skills of matching lyrics and music. His lyrics can only be matched with his own melody, and karaoke singers definitely can't do it. One of the images that impressed me deeply was the bright eyes of Pete Seeger played by Edward Norton in this film, and his always passionate and easy-going stage style, which formed a sharp contrast with Bob Dylan's sharp edge and deliberate performance.

The love story is also well-filmed. Sylvie helps Dylan a lot. She is also a very rational girl. In the film, Dylan invites her to participate in the Newport Music Festival. She saw Dylan and Joan Baez singing together on the stage and left. Dylan chased her to the port to keep her. She said, "You said that the clown performance at the carnival was very exciting, and I was just a plate in your hand (being played around by you)." After saying that, she left resolutely. At this time, Joan Baez had actually broken up with Dylan. In fact, the film gave a very personal detail: Joan was performing on the stage, and Dylan was preparing backstage. She gave him a middle finger while strumming the strings.

The film is about the grudges between the underworld and the love between the benefactor and the daughter, but it is just a brief introduction. The whole film is linked by his works of different styles in different periods, starting with "Song for Woody" and ending with "Like a Rolling Stone". As a slice, it is perfect.

Timothée Chalamet's portrayal of Bob Dylan is very similar, and he must have put a lot of effort into it. He must have watched a lot of videos of Dylan's performances and captured his main features. He is a little more handsome than Dylan, but from the side he looks very similar, and his acting is also very similar. It's like watching Fassbender play Steve Jobs. Although the two are poles apart, his acting is very similar.

Anyway, it's much better than the messy garbage like Bianola that doesn't meet professional standards, but what can we do? Our era is an era that produces garbage, praises garbage, and rewards garbage.

In the movie, Bob Dylan is always writing songs, humming songs, and performing. Music is the center of his life in those years. The complaints of his cohabiting girlfriend and the tenderness of his lover can't distract him. In this era we live in, everyone is swiping their phones, and nothing can distract them, so they praise garbage like Anora, because you won't miss any shots or plots even if you are swiping your phone while watching this kind of movie.

Anora is not too bad, but it is probably still a dozen fucking multiverses away from being the best movie. These two movies are my least favorite genre. But before I started to criticize, I held my nose and watched it without fast-forwarding. I watched Anora in eight sessions, and fell asleep after watching it for more than ten minutes each time. I will not spend time discussing such movies again. I can use this time to watch "A complete unknown" again.

After watching the movie, I went to watch the video at the Newport Music Festival.

The best biopics can explain the protagonist's life in a clear and logical way, so that people who are not familiar with the protagonist can have a full understanding of the protagonist. At the same time, they also have certain novelties in artistic expression, thought, etc., so that people who are familiar with the protagonist can also get new inspiration.

Secondly, it explains the protagonist's life clearly, fluently and faithfully, allowing people who are not familiar with the protagonist to fully understand the protagonist. For people who are familiar with the protagonist, although they can still enjoy watching it, they will more or less feel that "I know all this." Of course, it is also fun to find faults and appreciate the cast.

Or maybe people who are not familiar with the protagonist will be confused, but people who are familiar with the protagonist will be very happy to watch it, and the various references are so exciting. I'm not There is such a movie.

The above two kinds of pursuits are different. It is hard to say which one is better. It depends on how the director and actors present it.

This is the worst kind. People who are not familiar with Dylan will be confused and have no idea why this guy is so popular. Why do the audiences react so strongly to him just playing the electric guitar? People who are familiar with Dylan will find it very boring.

(Of course, pure speculation and nonsense are not included in the discussion.)

It's not easy to make Dylan look so boring, with Timothée Chalamet always wearing only shorts and playing guitar, almost revealing the thing that Jim Morrison showed, and still being full of sexual appeal.

The only thing I am satisfied with about this film is that Norton's portrayal of Sigurd is somewhat realistic, and he was not filmed as a clown chopping wires with an axe.

1963-1965 was the period when Bob Dylan changed from unplugged to plugged in. It was a historical moment for both American folk songs and rock music, so it was repeatedly written about, and Martin Scorsese's documentaries "No Direction Home" and "The Other Side of the Mirror" were used to recall and ruminate. This film does not stick to Dylan's chronology, and even rejects the format of a biopic. Instead, it amplifies the relationship between the characters, highlights and strengthens the dramatic arc, and reflects Dylan through the attitudes of his mentors, colleagues, lovers and opponents around him. It is basically a film composed of reaction shots.

The film does not shy away from the mistakes made by the fledgling Dylan in terms of honesty and loyalty. Almost everything about him is borrowed or fictitious, including his name. When he was in Minnesota, he was called Robert Zimmerman. He is a genius, with talent, ambition, self-discipline, and what Nabokov called "brilliant hypocrisy." The well-behaved Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan, a rookie in New York, and forms an intertextual relationship with Dylan in terms of age and rebellion against the inherent type of work. It is a bit ambiguous who the target audience of this film is, Bob Dylan's music fans or Timothée Chalamet fans who don't even know who Bob Dylan is?

Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger, an upright folk purist who has a very different personality from Dylan. His performance is worth savoring shot by shot. He is low-key and restrained, as smooth as jade, but he can shine in 1080P among a group of 720p stars.

The film is a thin chronicle of the miracle of a 19-year-old who ventured into New York alone and soared to the sky in three to five years. The plot is only supported by the love triangle between Bob, Joan Baez and Suzie Rotolo. But it is a genuine music movie. The concert occupies a large part of the movie, and there is no lip syncing, all the actors sing live! Timothée Chalamet spent 4 years learning guitar and harmonica, and sang 40 Dylan songs in the movie. This is the biggest benefit of this film. Listening to the music telling itself in a movie with a weak plot, the audience can understand the essence of Dylan from the works of this writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his lyrics. In any case, in 1961, the unknown small town literary youth Dylan drifted to New York and changed music forever.

The film found a very tense point at the end: the collision of country and new rock represents the beginning of global culture in that era, the voice of a new generation was heard, and various waves surged, but the director only grasped the idea, focusing on Bob's approach and restoring the story, and failed to express a greater meaning through the masses or the rich supporting roles. Bob's confused transformation of weighing and changing is a generation away, the female characters are also terribly shallow, and the photography is just passing. The dialogue, following, etc., are not rhythmic, but I have to say that some of the scenery is not bad, the charm of New York is still there, and the power of music fills some of the shortcomings.