by Julian Wood
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Timothee Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Mona Barbaro, Scott McNairy, Dan Fogler
Intro:
[Chalamet’s] performance alone is worth the price of the ticket.
This is an interesting time for director James Mangold to make this movie about Bob Dylan, a singer/songwriter who was once the ‘voice of his generation’ but might now appear to Gen Z as that old bloke with the scratchy voice that their grandparents listen to. The stroke of genius in this very long-gestated film was to cast Timothee Chalamet as Dylan. Chalamet is a very talented actor and, on this showing, more than a competent vocal impersonator and musician, but he is also the ‘it guy’ and like Dylan seems to command both adulation and media focus.
In the live-link Q&A that followed the film’s Australian opening night, young Timmy seems to be swigging from a bottle of vodka, which could either be affectation or staying in character. Either way, he exudes both confidence and the kind of shrug in the face of fame that Dylan made his own.
‘Dylan’, of course, is a creation; like many showbiz people, he crafted a persona, from making up his surname (significantly taking that name from a poet) to shrouding his more banal domestic origins with Gypsy touches to further bolster his mystique.
However, he could also write. He penned songs that could break your heart or inspire a generation. Dylan is still alive of course, and apparently kept a wise distance from this film, although he also did not condemn it. Given the excess of interpretation that he has attracted (Dylanology conferences anyone?), he must be well-practiced at this evasiveness, which has served him so well for over 60 years. A few years back, he was a surprise choice for the Nobel Prize for literature, but (of course) he declined to accept the prize in person.
James Mangold made, among other films, Walk the Line about Johnny Cash, so he is very skilled at delivering a solid Hollywood biopic. This one is somewhat relentless, but it doesn’t feel over long and the performances are all top notch. Edward Norton plays the gentle communist folk singer Pete Seeger with total conviction. The underrated Scoot McNairy has a tricky task to play the stroke-affected and voiceless folk singer Woody Guthrie, who Dylan so revered. The scenes with him and Chalamet are really touching.
Dylan seems to have had an ‘eye for the ladies’ – in the slang of the day – but he also had the single-mindedness if not ruthlessness to put his art above all attachments. This is to the detriment of his long-term girlfriend Sylvie (a moving turn from Elle Fanning) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), his sometime lover, who was his equal in street cool and had a better vocal range.
Given the wide panorama of Dylan’s career (there are literally hundreds of songs and, impressively, Chalamet learned 30 of them), the film could sprawl. However, Mangold contains the narrative to the mid to late sixties, culminating in the now iconic moment at the Newport Folk Festival where Dylan showed the first of his “F you” moves by confounding the audience with an amplified rock set. This might seem a storm in a teacup but, equally, it could be a small marker in the rupture between folk and rock as the latter eclipsed the former in terms of being the preferred vehicle for youth rebellion.
The film will no doubt garner a lot of attention (and probably box office) and will further cement Chalamet as a young star. As Paul Simon (Dylan’s equal as a rock poet) said, “every generation throws a hero up the pop charts”. This is further evidence that Timmy deserves the actor’s equivalent. His performance alone is worth the price of the ticket.
Dylan himself doesn’t need any further acclaim. He will always have his detractors, but they are, in the end, silenced by the achievements. One further effect may be to send a new generation back to the oeuvre of this fecund troubadour with a voice like sand and glue. As the film reminds us, there are indeed a lot of very fine songs to reconnect with.
