‘A Complete Unknown’: Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric - Trailer

Jul 24

From Ryan Cordaro

The summer movie season is beginning to wind down, even if one of the biggest movies of the year is releasing in just a couple of days, but we’re slowly entering a fun part of the movie year: awards season. Both Toronto and Venice have announced their lineup for their respective festivals set to go down later this year, and they include some potential heavy hitters. Searchlight Pictures has been one of the heavyweights in awards season for the past few years, with at least one of their films being nominated for Best Picture every year since 2018, including a couple of wins in the category. I’ve seen some articles and YouTube videos from people who are much more in-tune with the awards race thinking about what Searchlight could push this year, and none of them guessed A Complete Unknown, the biopic following famed singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, mainly because no one even knew it was coming out this year until the first teaser trailer released this morning.

There’s not a bunch of details out there on how wide-spanning this will be on Bob Dylan’s career, but we do know that it’s based on a book titled Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, and the song featured is “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was Dylan’s first single that dove into rock music and an electric sound. If I had to make a guess, A Complete Unknown will follow Dylan in his early years as a musician and culminate at his controversial set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. As you can see, Timothée Chalamet will be playing Dylan, as well as being a producer on it. While I’m still on the fence about Chalamet in this role, I think James Mangold is a fantastic choice for a director and co-writer. Mangold’s a versatile director who’s dabbled in action, drama, and westerns, but the trailer highlights two of his films that should get people the most excited: the Oscar-nominated Ford v. Ferrari and his other musician-focused biopic, Walk the Line. Mangold’s also had some luck with Oscar nominations recently, so there’s a shot of Chalamet walking home with some nominations and even some wins for this, if Searchlight ends up making the big awards push.

Including Chalamet (Dune: Part Two, Wonka), the cast for A Complete Unknown is rounded out by Edward Norton (Fight Club, Asteroid City), Elle Fanning (The Great, the upcoming Badlands), Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick, FUBAR), Boyd Holbrook (The Bikeriders, Logan), Dan Fogler (the Fantastic Beasts franchise, The Walking Dead), Norbert Leo Butz (The Exorcist: Believer, Dan in Real Life), P.J. Byrne (The Boys franchise, Babylon), and Scoot McNairy (Argo, the upcoming Nightbitch).