A Complete Unknown

Last night I returned to the Broadway to see A Complete Unknown and I loved it so much.  A young Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) hitchhikes to New York City in 1961 in order to meet his hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in the hospital.  While there he also meets Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and impresses him with an original song.  Seeger takes him in and introduces him to the folk community in New York and, as Dylan begins performing, he meets artist and social activist Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) and begins a relationship with her, musician Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and begins performing and collaborating with her, and manager Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler) and begins recording his first album with him.  At first Dylan is so eager to be a musician he consents to record covers of well-known folk songs but he soon pushes to record his own compositions.  He becomes extremely popular and this brings a lot of attention to folk music.  However, he eventually grows weary of performing the same songs the crowd wants to hear over and over again and of being boxed in by the record company so he forms a band with musicians he admires and experiments with his sound.  This causes consternation with the planning committee for the Newport Folk Festival, where he is scheduled to headline in 1965, so Seeger entreats him to stay true to his roots for the sake of the folk community but Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) convinces him to stay true to himself.  I have seen Bob Dylan perform live twice and he does not care what anyone thinks because he performs the songs he wants to perform (which are often not the songs the crowd wants to hear) in the way he wants to perform them (which is often very different from the recorded versions) and he refuses to interact with the crowd.  I actually admire the fact that he is unapologetically himself so I really loved that this movie explores his journey to artistic freedom and I especially enjoyed the scenes where he refuses to play "Blowin' in the Wind" on stage with Baez and when the crowd turns on him when he plays "Like a Rolling Stone" for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival (the crowd occasionally booed him both times I saw him live).  Chalamet is absolutely brilliant in the role because he perfectly captures Dylan's restlessness as he becomes trapped by expectations and, even more impressive, he performs every song live himself (singing and playing the guitar and harmonica) and sounds remarkably similar to Dylan.  I found him riveting and I particularly loved his versions of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," "The Times They Are a-Changin'," and "It Ain't Me, Babe" with Barbaro (who also performs all of her own songs as Baez, as does Norton as Seeger, and Holbrook as Cash).  I was blown away by this movie and I am sure it will be one of my favorites this year!