A Com­plete Unknown, the brand new film about Bob Dylan’s rise within the folk-music scene of the ear­ly 9­teen-six­ties and sub­se­quent elec­tri­fied break with it, has been praised for not tak­ing exces­sive lib­er­ties, no less than by the stan­dards of pop­u­lar music biopics. Its con­ver­sion of an actual chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry has entailed var­i­ous con­fla­tions, com­pres­sions, and rearrange­ments, however you’d count on that from a Hol­ly­wooden direc­tor like James Man­gold. What many view­ers’ judg­ment will come all the way down to is much less his­tor­i­cal verac­i­ty than whether or not they consider Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met because the younger Bob Dylan — or quite, because the younger Bob Dylan they’ve all the time imag­ined.

Nonetheless, a lot will depend on the remainder of the solid, who por­tray a number of main folk- and folk-adja­cent fig­ures includ­ing Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, John­ny Money, Alan Lomax, and the late Peter Yarrow. No per­for­mance aside from Cha­la­met’s has acquired as a lot atten­tion as Mon­i­ca Bar­baro’s Joan Baez. In these char­ac­ters’ key scene togeth­er they take the stage on the 1964 New­port Folks Fes­ti­val and sing “It Ain’t Me Babe,” a Dylan music that Baez also record­ed. Their ren­di­tion con­veys the depth of their roman­tic and artis­tic con­nec­tion not simply to the audi­ence, but additionally to Dylan’s lady­pal, performed by Elle Fan­ning, watch­ing simply off­stage.

“That concept of the key is actual­ly what I want­ed to dri­ve the scene,” says Man­gold, utilizing the lan­guage of his commerce, in the Vari­ety video at the top of the post. “Ulti­mate­ly, I’ve bought to get it to the place Elle is dri­ven away by what­ev­er she’s seen on stage. However it could­n’t have labored as nicely if Cha­la­met and Bar­baro had­n’t nailed the per­for­mance, simply one in all many within the movie shot 100 per­cent stay. If you happen to’d prefer to com­pare them to the true factor, take a look on the footage of Dylan and Baez singing “It Ain’t Me Babe” at the actu­al 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val simply above. After that, it’s possible you’ll wish to return to the pre­vi­ous 12 months’s fes­ti­val and watch their per­for­mance of “With God on Our Side” — and, whilst you’re at it, lis­ten to Dylan’s entire cat­a­log all over again.

Relat­ed con­tent

Joan Baez Live in 1965: Full Con­cert

Bob Dylan’s His­toric New­port Folk Fes­ti­val Per­for­mances, 1963–1965

Watch Joan Baez Endear­ing­ly Imi­tate Bob Dylan (1972)

The Moment When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: Watch Him Play “Maggie’s Farm” at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.