A Complete Unknown

 A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

 Bob Dylan. He exists over my childhood. I mean his songs were there. I’m 48. Like every 48 year old I bought a bob Dylan album at some point in my life. Theres no particular album, like definitely maybe, or paranoid and Sunburnt from bands of my age, just something that will happen, would happen to everyone just by dint of time.

But I’ve never been a follower of personal lives. I suppose I’m lucky like that in a sense. Everyone else angsts about their artists being cancelled when I was jut there for the tunes in the first place.

Which kind of helps this film which is , for a film about a man seen as a radical and a rebel, is a completely pedestrian narrative which confuses that silent enigma shit of a level cheekbones as actual character which at my age is not disaffection just pretention and harmlessness.

Following Bobs journey from arriving in town as little more then a cypher with q guitar and ending with bob as a cypher with little more then an amp is not so much about a heroes journey but rather the changing of the times.  Tis pretty, perhaps too pretty. But it says a lot when the most interesting people in the film are everyone but bob. From Joan Baez to johnny cash to the entourage and folklore of woody Guthrie, we see everyone have an opinion and an agenda and a personality. But for some reason the saviour complex and attention looking for makes me feel I’m watching a be kind rewind version of dune. The film has no problem with this saviour complex. Bob spends time being seen as caring about racism and has a relationship with a Black woman that lasts shorter than the title sequence with the punt being she loves him, and he don’t care.

It’s a film tentatively sold on its sound, but without the commitment to go full jukebox musical its hard to say its got enough to keep the acoustics happy. I went to look at a screening once. Recently. They had eight seats sold. In the middle. For best sound. I went for the aisle and needed the bathroom

This is a romanticised part of the man film movement where cheekbones men are given cunt licences in terms of their treatments of others for some indecipherable quality of artists. In an era, we are questioning that more and more. It makes the film more dated than any fashion statement. But then this happened to Pablo Picasso.

It’s a diverting film, but ultimately bland. And those looking for the grit folk aspires to be in fables a tall tales would do better to stick to bootleg tapes and the reddit forums Nish Kumar hangs out in faceting vinyl reissues and what era is most politically sensitive. I mean I’ve not seen that as a fact. But it is true.

Otherwise. It little more then a rainy afternoon diversion.