The tall task of portraying a timeless and well-revered artist such as Bob Dylan through a biopic is a grueling job for any actor. With the role teetering on the fine line between endless acclaim or meticulous scrutiny, it is a challenge that encapsulates risks and rewards. Many Dylan fans are eager to express their skepticism of anybody being able to dawn the notorious folk singer-songwriter onto the silver screen faithfully. 

Skepticism was expected since 2007’s “I’m Not There,” and the recently released “A Complete Unknown” at the end of last year. An invisible “it comes with the job” quality is attached to the biopic genre as these films are complimented with established audiences behind them. New biopics are pumped out year after year, and they’ve become Hollywood’s latest profit-hopeful obsession. So it begs the question of whether film has the capacity to authentically represent artists like Bob Dylan, or any other celebrity icon waiting for their next biopic to be made.

An unignorable aspect of Dylan as a celebrity is his carefully crafted vagueness about his past, combined with his larger-than-life lyricism that has cultivated into a sensationalized mythology that seeks to define an individual who consistently wishes to be undefinable. 

This mythological aspect of celebrity culture is a concept that ultimately flattens the intention of what biopics market themselves as — the truth. No matter if you have only heard of Bob Dylan recently due to one of the film industry’s most talented and popular actors working today, deciding to accept the challenge of fictionally carrying the same weight on their shoulders as an artist such as Dylan, in film. 

Admirers of Dylan have been well-fed; there have been two biopics made within less than a generation from each other. Serving as two sides of the same coin, both films could not be further apart in their depiction and storytelling of the superstar folk artist. 

 “A Complete Unknown,” directed by James Mangold, opened in theaters last year with surmountable expectations. Based on the book, “Dylan Goes Electric!” by Elijah Wald, the film focuses on Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), in the early stages of his career as folk music’s newest and rising star. Eventually he became one of the genre’s main influences, propelling folk music into popularity in the 1960s. Dylan also challenged the folk music industry with his controversial use of electronic instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. 

Held within the vision of a big Hollywood studio biopic, “A Complete Unknown” offers audiences a conventional but well-made representation of Dylan from unknown to a critically acclaimed artist. It follows one linear narrative with only one actor portraying the ambiguous star. It should be pointed out that Chalamet’s performance as Dylan is strikingly convincing and deserving of all the praise he has received. 

Critics have labeled “A Complete Unknown” as conventional, however, the director did make significant stoves away from this formulaic biopic trope: seeing the star as the talented child, watching them be molded into fame and witnessing the star grow old well past their heyday. Director James Mangold smartly opts to showcase his subject of interest within a four-year span throughout the film’s runtime. 

However, for some audiences, Mangold’s latest depiction of Bob Dylan may still be deemed too surface-level for an artist with such nuance on how the public perceives him. Fans may have come out of the theater with the same understanding and knowledge of the musician as they did the moment right before they sat in their seats for “A Complete Unknown.” 

“I’m Not There,” the first Bob Dylan biopic, was directed by Todd Haynes in 2007, starring Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Marcus Carl Franklin, is as unconventional as biopics come. The film ambitiously uses six actors to portray various aspects and periods of Bob Dylan’s life and mythology. Narratively, “I’m Not There” jumps back and forth between each character to create a non-linear story, without ever outright labeling any cast member as Bob Dylan. 

The film cleverly utilizes fictionalization to its advantage in its attempt to uncover reality. Within the genre, there will always be a fragment of fiction where the detailed truth of a real-life person is at the mercy of what the film’s creators dictate as fact and fantasy for the audience to consume. The producers choose to dramatize or romanticize the individual and the events surrounding them for the sake of entertainment, and more importantly, studio profit. 

“I’m Not There” may not provide absolute answers to demystify Dylan’s past or any of the long-standing questions that fans have speculated explanations on over the decades of his career. Instead, Hayne’s film can be seen as a loose case study of Dylan and the surrounding mythology attached to his fame. Similar to how many other subjects of interest within biopics develop grandiose backstories that may lean into the fantastical expectations of what fans want to believe, or what celebrities wish for fans to spread amongst themselves. 

When comparing the two biopics, it is up to the watcher to determine which of the two renditions does justice to the story of Bob Dylan. With its amazing acting and singing between an ensemble cast and a generic beat-for-beat storyline that has followed conventional Hollywood biopics time after time, “A Complete Unknown” stays traditional in its homage to Dylan. 

However, “I’m Not There,” strips away the rules and tropes that the genre is most famously critiqued for in its quest to depict “reality.” This film knows its subject of interest is undefinable and leans into its fictional storytelling to capture what makes Dylan so fascinating for the public, attempting to dissect why he has been such a thorn in the expectations of those who idolized him. 

The thorn lodged at the side of those expectations are the same expectations that are put on biopics to authentically reveal the unrevealable. This plagues the satisfaction of audiences for celebrities — such as Bob Dylan fans — to never fully be fulfilled with what they are given on the screen. Perhaps the concept of biopics has been flawed since its conception and practice. 

 

Author