How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
(Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone)
photo: searchlight pictures...
Whether you're a young Timothee Chalamet fan or a devoted Bob Dylan devotee, the coolest movie this holiday calendar switch between 2024 and 2025 is without a doubt A complete stranger. Name taken from a verse of one of Dylan's most famous songs Like a Rolling Stone, and based on the book by Elijah Wald Dylan Goes Electric!, this work holds the attention for all 140 minutes of its duration with one furious rush of reality, which it is filled to the brim with. Aside from the artistic freedom in the treatment of Dylan's early life, from the time when, as a nineteen-year-old, he came to New York in January 1961 to meet his hero Woody Guthrie, until July 1965, when at the Newport Folk Festival cars like an electric rock superstar. This is the saga of perhaps the most significant personality of the 20th century, when it comes to music and philosophy of the modern world.
So, regardless of everything, the plot of the film A complete stranger actually teems with a high-order plausibility about the sudden appearance of a visionary guy from Minnesota in the midst of a somewhat jaded New York folk community. Quite enough to make you cry several times during the movie and scream with delight twice as much.
photo: mcf megacom film...
Because Bob Dylan came to this world for an obvious reason. Is he the Christ of the new sound order? Well yes, definitely. Is his John the Baptist noble Pete Seeger, as someone said, in Edward Norton's masterful interpretation? Well, not by chance. All credit to Seeger, maybe even more to his wife Tosha, who understood everything about Dylan brilliantly at first, but the one who stands in front of everyone was Guthrie. Woody Guthrie who is currently living in the hospital Greystone Park, where he spends his infirm days ravaged by Huntington's disease. And to whom the still anonymous, teenage troubadour Bob Dylan comes to pay his respects, singing his song Song to Woody inside a depressed psychiatric clinic, while his mute idol pounds his fist on the bedside table in wild approval. Well, if you don't shed a tear at this point, then really…
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
(Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-changin')
photo: mcf megacom film...
Robert Allen Zimmerman (b. 1941) may have really invented his entire self, but we understand it perfectly today. Born in industrial Minnesota, this poet and singer changed the landscape of mass culture in the era when it was being re-created in its present form in post-war times. A fan of black music, especially that of Little Richard, he opened his ears to social issues, primarily through the actions of his hero Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), paving his own path through the challenges of the modern existence of a city man.
He came to New York as a young and gentle, but already formed person. His wise head pours out his verses in torrents, even in the bedroom of his lovers – Suzy Rotolo (El Fanning) and more famously Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). The first is a sensitive girl from communist parents, full of understanding for his artistic passions, to which she herself aspires. The second is the superstar of the folk scene of the time, whose popularity and influence are not in question, self-aware and - as fascinated as he is by the provincial youth, as much as in constant competition with him. Both relationships, for different or the same reasons, will end in the historic year 1965, when Bob Dylan finally electrifies his unique author's vision.
photo: mcf megacom film...
Persistent and a little grumpy, this unusual dreamer and inventor of stories, primarily about his life, is fanatically devoted to creation and strikingly talented. Although de facto still a boy, Bob Dylan mercilessly destroys the hypocrisy and stubborn dogmatism of the East Coast folk scene. He listens to The Kinks and opposes the blind worship of petrified canons. The Cuban crisis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy make him an angry poet and a dangerous opponent of the system, from whom we can learn a lot in today's world. Creative scarcity, fortunately, never bothered him, and the only moment of true vulnerability recorded in the film is when he poignantly tries to keep his girlfriend Sylvie/Susie close to him, just before that breakthrough performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
(Bob Dylan, Masters of War)
photo: mcf megacom film...
It is only right that it is the crescendo of the film A complete stranger reserved just for this event, known as Dylan's historic appearance on stage with an electric band at the mentioned festival, the bastion of American folk music, where, after all, he had previously become famous.
photo: mcf megacom film...
The moment when Bob Dylan picked up the electric guitar was the mystical sign that rock and roll became a world phenomenon and transformed into rock culture. It was actually the last hour to do something like that. If Dylan hadn't brought about that change and stayed within the confines of the scene of protest poets with an acoustic guitar - rock and roll would forever remain a fun valve for teenagers, it's quite possible that we would remember The Beatles only as an exceptional guitar pop group from Liverpool, The Rolling Stones as raunchy blues cover artists for white kids, and The Who as the band that never wrote My generation - because no one would have the strength to bring intimate feelings and comments on social events into a pop song, nor to convey the experience of the world of their generation. And no one would dare to say out loud on the public stage, so to speak, that there is a lot wrong with the world that surrounds us. No one expected that from musicians... but it all happened at that moment, as soon as Dylan decided to amplify it to unimaginable proportions, plugging his guitar into the electricity without thinking.
photo: mcf megacom film...
Dylan knew for sure that his music and how it could reach a wider circle of people, and that its electrification was the only way forward. He had already heard what electrified blues sounded like, he just needed to find good musicians to play electrified folk. He had before him the following business facts: the second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), with which he broke through, was a bigger success than the third The Times They Are a-changin' (1964), with all his historical songs, while the fourth Another Side of Bob Dylan was the least well received. The trajectory of his career was clearly visible - being confined to a narrow market of folk music fans who adored him, prevented his words from reaching everyone else. The moment he brought the electric band on stage, literally everyone could hear him better, even those in the last rows. The rock and roll audience heard it too - and immediately understood it. The next masterpiece, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), was his first US Top 10 record, freeing rock 'n' roll from its genre constraints.
If Dylan hadn't jumped out of his market niche in 1965, there's every chance that someone else would have played electrified folk with powerful lyrics like his - The Byrds were already recording their debut album in California at that time, and the first hit on it would be a cover by then not yet published Mr. Tambourine Man plus three more versions of Dylan tracks. Of course, Bob understood where the flow of civilization was going and rushed to publish his electric music before everyone else.
After that act, rock and roll became what it is today, just as Bob Dylan became the definition of an era.
You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
(Bob Dylan, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding))
photo: mcf megacom film...
The main quality of the film A complete stranger, in addition to faithfully reconstructing the atmosphere of the first half of the 1960s and Dylan's groundbreaking moves in it, is a new look at his life story. The moment cinematographers start dealing with you, and presenting the narrative as it is already done on the big screen, it means that you have become greater than history and that, in all probability, you will last forever. In Dylan's case, he became a myth during his lifetime.
photo: searchlight pictures...
A Nobel Prize is fine, books about you are important, great documentaries are fine, but an outstanding, universally successful biographical film is the highest honor your peers and audience can give you. The dense fabric of the film does not allow us to look away for two hours and something, not demystifying Dylan's personality at all, quite the opposite - showing him as an inexplicable guy with a huge talent, who walks among ordinary people. A complete stranger thus building on Dylan's mythology, adding that final piece that was missing. And Timothee Chalamet had to become Dylan himself, in order for this kind of film to succeed.
photo: searchlight pictures...
Right now, while the whole world is watching A complete stranger, we unite again around Dylan's authentic artistic appearance as the first total star of pop culture. Simultaneously a musician, poet-writer, social activist and rock icon, he gave us a glimpse of what can be done with a wild fantasy, even when you are an outsider.
It is a global cinema hit, if something is not clear.
And if you wonder if today's youth can understand what that message is, look at our streets these days. Apparently many can do it. Your sons and daughters, as Dylan already said, are no longer under your command.
This torn world is missing a bit of Dylan again.
