A complete stranger: Timothée Chalamet shines as Dylan (review)

Bob Dylan, his genius, his mystery, explored in a biopic that avoids the clichés of the genre but not its pleasures: the songs that make you shiver and the performances of actors that leave you speechless.

“A complete stranger“: extract from the lyrics of one of the most emblematic pieces of Bob Dylan (“Like A Rolling Stone”), the title of this filmic evocation of the singer’s sixties New York years serves as a road map to the scenario – it is indeed a complete stranger who arrives, one fine day in 1961, in the small bohemian circle of folk music lovers, this kid from Minnesota, with his guitar on his back as his only luggage.

And this is how he will leave the film again, four years (2h20 of footage) later: the troubadour who became a superstar will remain a mystery, a walking question, “a complete stranger“. Dylan himself says it in the film, in the guise of his (fabulous) interpreter Timothée Chalamet : childhood memories, where we come from, what we claim to be our identity, all that is bullshit. So young Robert Zimmerman can rename himself Bob Dylan if he wants, invent a past as a traveling circus artist, and have a different face in his youth photos…

Very aware of the formidable clichés that threaten the biopic, the director James Mangold was careful not to approach his subject from the angle of founding scenes and ready-made psychoanalytic explanations. But don’t expect a anti-biopic: the arty Dylanian Chinese portrait has already been done (by Todd Haynes, in I’m not there) and the solid craftsman that is Mangold is not here to show off: his film will deliver the pleasures that we expect from this ultra-codified genre, but in ways that are a little different from, say, Walk The Line – to cite one of the standard meters of its kind, already produced by him.

Sumptuously reconstructing New York at the start of the sixties, as well as the concerts of the Newport festival, the scene in 1965 of the transformation of the acoustic bard into an electric rocker (to the great dismay of folk purists), A Perfect Stranger is a delight of neo-classical Hollywood production (what was expected of the director of Le Mans ’66), with chiseled vintage patina, slight Western scent (what we expected from the director of Copland), Scope format which immediately electrifies (the shot-reverse shot on the face of Chalamet/Dylan and the New York skyline on the horizon), stunning casting (Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaroall stunning), and plethoric best-of soundtrack, impeccably sung by Chalamet.

Meticulous and educational, Mangold mixes anecdotes and favors historical shortcuts (Dylanophile geeks will wince in places) to tell, not so much Dylan himself, but the effect his music produces on those who listen to him and cross his path. The film unfolds through scenes where the artist reveals his new compositions: first to his idol Woody Guthrie, who dubs him, then to the singer Joan Baez, who succumbs, later to the Newport crowd, who exults upon hearing “The Times They Are A-Changin’” for the very first time…

Each time, their reactions push Dylan in another direction, another dimension. It is therefore as much a portrait that Mangold paints as the picture of a world, of a community – a community so populated that there are no less than two father figures (Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger) and two lovers ( the brunette Baez and the blonde Sylvie Russo).

In the middle of these perfectly drawn silhouettes, Chalamet is brilliantly elusive, distant, changing, fleeting, almost blurry (as his model will be in 66 on the cover of Blonde on Blonde), physically consistent with the idea that we cannot fully “capture” Dylan, that we cannot bottle his genius. Unlike the Newport 65 festival-goers, you’re unlikely to boo when the end credits roll.

By James Mangold. With Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning… Duration 2h21. Released January 29, 2025