‘A Complete Unknown’ First Reactions Applaud Timothée Chalamet’s “Tour-De-Force Performance” As Bob Dylan
James Mangold and Timothée Chalamet on the set of A Complete Unknown. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
While audiences took their time to come around on Bob Dylan’s sudden shift of style in 1965, praise for Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown is pouring in instantly.
James Mangold’s biopic of the Nobel Prize-Winning music icon had its first screenings in Los Angeles earlier this week, generating quick buzz for the “shockingly moving” film, which hits theaters nationwide this Christmas.
Eze Baum, This Week Media’s Chief Film Critic, noted the film’s “overly dramatic notes,” while praising Chalamet, as well as the accompanying “attention to detail suited to any longtime Dylan fan.”
Variety’s Clayton Davis added to the heaps of adoration directed towards Chalamet’s star performance as the greatest musician of the 20th century: “Chalamet slides into Bob Dylan with an effortless yet focused determination in A Complete Unknown… James Mangold helms with confidence, with gorgeous sets and costumes.”
Searchlight released the first track from Chalamet’s thorough set of renditions of Dylan’s songs, used in the film, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” off the 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.”
Chalamet, who portrays Bob Dylan from his arrival in New York City in 1961 to the famous moment in which he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, sings all Dylan vocals used in the film, rather than opting to play the original studio recordings.
Chalamet’s performance — as well as the larger film as a whole — has been generating plenty of Oscar buzz as reactions pour in, positioning him for a potential win that would make him the youngest winner in Oscar history.
See Timothée Chalamet perform “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” as well as more reactions to A Complete Unknown, below.
