Movie Review: Bob Dylan biopic 'A Complete Unknown' is electric in more ways than one

“A Complete Unknown” certainly lives up to its title. You are hardly closer to understanding the soul of Bob Dylan after watching more than two hours of this moody look at America's most enigmatic troubadour. But that's not the point of James Mangold's biopic: It's not who Dylan is but what he does to us.

Mangold — who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks — doesn't do a traditional cradle-to-the-near-grave treatment. He concentrates on the few crucial years between when Dylan arrived in New York in 1961 and when he blew the doors off the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 by adding a Fender Stratocaster.

That means we never learn anything about Dylan before he arrives in Manhattan's Greenwich Village with a guitar, a wool-lined bomber jacket, a fisherman's cap and ambition. And Dylan being Dylan, we just get scraps after that.

The world spins around him, this uber-cypher of American song. Women fall in love with him, musicians seek his orbit, fans demand his autograph, record executives fight over his signature. The Cuban Missile Crisis melds into the Kennedy assassination and the March on Washington. What does Dylan make of all this? The answer is blowing in the wind.

Any sane actor would run away from this assignment. Not Timothée Chalamet, and “A Complete Unknown” is his most ambitious work to date, asking him not only to play insecure-within-a-sneer but also to play and sing 40 songs in Dylan's unmistakable growl, complete with blustery harmonica. Daniel Craig has been called brave for his role this awards season in “Queer.” Try playing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in front of a crowd.

The last big non-documentary attempt to understand Dylan was Todd Haynes' “I’m Not There,” which split the assignment among seven actors. Chalamet does it all, moving from callow, fresh-faced songsmith to arrogant, selfish New Yorker to jaded, staggering pop star to Angry Young Man. There are moments when Chalamet tilts his head down and looks at the world slyly, like Princess Diana. There are others when the resemblance is uncanny, but also moments when it is a tad forced. You cannot deny he's got the essence of Dylan down, though.

The movie's title is pulled from Dylan’s lyrics for “Like a Rolling Stone” and it's adapted from Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.” Dylan isn't a producer but did consult on the script.

It's not the most glowing profile, though the sheer brilliance of the songs — so many the movie might be deemed a musical — show Dylan's undeniable genius. Chalamet's Dylan is unfaithful, jealous and puckish. The movie suggests that adding electric guitar at Newport in '65 was less a brave stand for music’s evolution than a middle finger to anyone who dared put him in a box.

In some ways, “A Complete Unknown” uses some of the DNA from “I’m Not There.” The best clues to what's going on behind Dylan's shades are the refracted light from others, like Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and a girlfriend called Sylvie Russo, based on Dylan’s ex Suze Rotolo, who is pictured on 1963’s album cover for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

Edward Norton is a hangdog Seeger hoping to harness Dylan for the goodness of folk, astonished by his talent. Monica Barbaro is a revelation as Baez, Dylan's on-again-off-again paramour. Boyd Holbrook is a sharklike, disrupting Cash, with the movie's best line: “Make some noise, B.D. Track some mud on the carpet.” And Elle Fanning is captivating as Russo, the sweetheart sucked into this crazy rock drama.

It's Baez and Russo who dig the deepest into trying to find out who Dylan is. They don't buy his stories about learning from the carnival and call him on his facade-building. “I don't know you,” Russo says, calling him a “mysterious minstrel” and urging him to “Stop hiding.” Too late, sister.

There are some lovely moments, especially the morning after Baez spends the night and she wakes to him working on “Blowin’ in the Wind.” They spar a bit (he calls her songs “oil paintings at a dentist office,” and she calls him worse than a jerk) but they come together on the side of his bed in their underwear, he fumbling through what will be one of the greatest protest songs in history, and she supplying delicate harmony.

Mangold — who directed the Cash biopic “Walk the Line” — is always good with music and clearly loves being in this world. There's one scene that initially puzzles — Dylan stops on the street to buy a toy whistle — and you wonder why the director has wasted our time. Then we see Dylan pull it out at the top of the recording of “Highway 61 Revisited” and suddenly it answers all those years of wondering what that crazy sound was.

There are points to quibble — Dylan never faced a shout of “Judas!” from an enraged folkie at Newport; that came a year later in Manchester — but “A Complete Unknown” is utterly fascinating, capturing a moment in time when songs had weight, when they could move the culture — even if the singer who made them was as puzzling as a rolling stone.

“A Complete Unknown,” a Searchlight Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R for “language.” Running time: 141 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

Monica Barbaro poses for photographers upon arrival at the photo call for the film 'A Complete Unknown', in London, on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Elle Fanning, left and Monica Barbaro poses for photographers upon arrival at the photo call for the film 'A Complete Unknown', in London, on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Director James Mangold, from left, Elle Fanning, Timothee Chalamet and Monica Barbaro pose for photographers upon arrival at the photo call for the film 'A Complete Unknown', in London, on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Elle Fanning, left, and Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures show director James Mangold, left, and Timothée Chalamet on the set of "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Edward Norton, left, and Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

This image released by Searchlight Pictures shows Timothée Chalamet in a scene from "A Complete Unknown." (Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures via AP)

President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some day care centers after a series of fraud schemes involving government programs in recent years.

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of “Trump’s long game.”

“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” Walz said.

O'Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O’Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.

The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.

There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

O’Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.

The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.

“That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants," he said in a video posted on X. "Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children.”

Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota's child care services office and she wasn't able to say "with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there’s fraud stretching statewide.”

Trump has criticized Walz’s administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

FILE - Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, June 12, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

FILE - State Sen. Michelle Benson reacts at a news conference on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul to a report by the state's legislative auditor on combatting fraud in Minnesota's Child Care Assistance Program. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski,File)