How a brilliant Timothee Chalamet nails Bob Dylan in one of the best biopics of the past decade

Any doubts about Timothee Chalamet being one of the best actors of his generation should be laid to rest after his astonishing performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

With a quality biopic of a revered, enigmatic singer-songwriter and an unconventional musical, this week’s new releases are hitting all the right notes.

A COMPETE UNKNOWN (M)

Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

Director: James Mangold (Walk the Line)

Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro

The times, he was a’changing them

It seems as if there’s at least one great movie coming out every week at the moment, and this welcome trend continues with what stands as one of the finest music biopics of the past decade.

What inevitably aids A Complete Unknown in its successful quest to fascinate, illuminate and compel an audience is its choice of subject.

The one and only Bob Dylan is undoubtedly the most influential singer-songwriter in music history.

Across a long and winding career, Dylan has progressively become more of an enigma to believers and nonbelievers alike.

However, there was a time when Dylan permitted glimpses of his true self to emerge: not just in his music, but in his day-to-day movements.

Therefore the second most crucial choice made by A Complete Unknown is its decision to focus exclusively on Dylan’s formative years, starting in 1961 when he became a sudden folk music sensation, and ending in 1965 with his equally sudden (and sensational) switch to an electrified sound.

The first most crucial choice? The casting of Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan.

On paper, the idea a viewer could buy into Chalamet in such a distinctive role had less than a 50-50 chance of working.

Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown.

In reality, Chalamet nails the brief with both astonishing authority and accuracy. It only takes a handful of scenes for any doubts to be extinguished.

Though Chalamet sings, strums and shuffles about just like the mysterious man himself, his performance is not an impersonation. It is as close to a direct channelling of the young, hungry and musically gifted Bob Dylan as we will ever get.

If you are not already ranking Chalamet as one of the eminent actors of his generation, it is time to change your tune.

As for the movie as a whole, it faithfully follows Dylan’s unprecedented ascension through America’s folk music scene with a minimum of fuss. Instead, the emphasis remains solely on the seismic effect hearing Dylan for the first time had on both audiences and his fellow musicians in the first half of the 1960s.

That feeling of being lured into a brave and exciting new world of musical expression comes through loud and proud at all times.

Often to the simultaneous awe and chagrin of those who were briefly close to Dylan, such as occasional lover and continual rival Joan Baez (a captivating Monica Barbaro) and the traditional folk music acolyte Pete Seeger (a wonderful Edward Norton).

A Complete Unknown is in cinemas now

WOLF MAN (MA15+)

Charlotte (Julia Garner), Ginger (Matilda Firth) and Blake (Christopher Abbott) in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell.

General release

Horror fans hoping to isolate something faintly fresh or original in Hollywood’s umpteenth retelling of the Wolf Man yarn had better bring along a microscope. This is, for the most part, a meek, mild and strangely inert effort, which feels as if has been dulled down by too much tinkering in its pre- and post-production phases.

A muted Christopher Abbott stars as Blake, a disillusioned writer who makes the mistake of dragging his wife (Julia Garner) and kid (Matilda Firth) to his childhood home deep in the woods of Oregon. It takes quite some time for things to get literally hairy for our protagonist, which means the movie never truly draws genuine chills or thrills from the rising threat Blake poses to both his family and himself.

Worse still, the visual scares attempted by the movie fail to intimidate unless they are accompanied by big, booming bursts of noise (a cheap shortcut to terror many of the best contemporary horror flicks are resisting the need to take).

Directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man).

EMILIA PEREZ (MA15+)

Zoe Saldana as Rita Moro Castro in Emilia Perez.

Selected cinemas

Mmmmm. How best to put this? Emilia Perez is this year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. Just like that esoteric head-scratcher, this maverick hybrid of gangster thriller, absurdist comedy and sublime musical sequences is sure to get a lot of love at the coming Oscars.

However, it is also one of those movies that does way, way too much to deliver what many will find to be way, way too little.

Spanish telenovela star Karla Sofia Gascon plays the title role, a woman who was once a man. And not just any man: Emilia used to be a Mexican drug lord who faked his own death and then changed genders, leaving behind a wife (Selena Gomez) and children in another country. Zoe Saldana co-stars as Rita, the lawyer who initially helped Emilia execute this complex disappearing act, and must now aid her client in the equally difficult task of becoming seen again.

The plotting is far more knotted, gnarly and inelegant than alluded to here, and even those viewers who start out enjoying the cheeky, yet stylish anarchy of it all will find it hard to remain truly enthused the whole way through. A persistent saving grace is the intense combination of grace and grit to be found in all three lead performances. Same goes for the captivating music scenes (composed by French singer-songwriter Camille).

Originally published as How a brilliant Timothee Chalamet nails Bob Dylan in one of the best biopics of the past decade