For Bruce Springsteen, it was the first snare shot of “Like a Rolling Stone” that opened the door to his thoughts. He’s not wrong. And he is not alone.

This iconic Bob Dylan song has stood the test of time and will continue to stand the test of time. Sixty years later, it still sparkles with energy and urgency – even if a significant portion of Dylan’s audience in 1965 wanted nothing to do with it.

A year after Dylan “joined” the Newport Folk Festival in July, he embarked on a whirlwind tour of England, playing the first half of the concert acoustically and the second half electric. The audience bought tickets only to boo him. They hurled insults and ridicule. At a concert at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, a fan shouted “Judas!” from the audience.

“I don’t believe you,” Dylan scoffed from the stage. “You’re a liar.” And then he turned to the band and said, “Play it damn loud.”

This scene, transported from England to Newport, reset from 1966 to 1965 and missing the four-letter slur, is recreated in A complete unknown. It’s not an improvement.

Written by Jay Cocks and James Mangold, who also directs. A complete unknown adapts Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan goes electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the night that divided the sixties and revives a small excerpt from Dylan’s beginnings. It begins with Dylan arriving in New York City in search of his hero Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), meeting fellow folk artist Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), and then meeting the right people: Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). , Albert Grossman (Dan Fogler), Bob Neuwirth (Will Harrison) and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning).

Only Russo is made. Based on Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, who was immortalized on the 1963 album cover Bob Dylan on the looseRusso plays an aspiring artist who is in love with the cute boy with the floppy hair and the funny voice. Meanwhile, Dylan (Timothée Chalamet, who sings himself) is distracted by the attraction of Seeger, Baez and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook). They all love Dylan, but only Grossman and Russo realize he’s different.

A complete unknown plays like a Wikipedia article. Dylan gets a record deal with Columbia and releases a CD full of standards. It’s not going anywhere. He comes back with a CD full of originals and explodes. He drifts from Russo to Baez and back to Russo. Chalamet plays these scenes coyly, vacillating between a Dylan caricature and a typical genius frustrated that everyone wants a piece of what he has. Chalamet is as thin as a twig and has a large tuft of hair. He has a similar profile to Dylan. But he spends too much time portraying Dylan as a real person rather than the character Dylan himself masterfully created.

Born long before the age of hyperinformation, Dylan has always been a slippery guy. Where he came from, where he learned to play, what his real name was and what really happened to Guthrie in that hospital room are the stuff of Dylan stories. But six decades of archival footage, books and documentaries have lifted the curtain behind the enigmatic troubadour.

However, he still seems inscrutable. Just look at the meta-documentation from 2019 Rolling Thunder Revuewhere Dylan and director Martin Scorsese play around with the truth. Sharon Stone creates a story about meeting Dylan as a young girl, while Scorsese inserts a completely fictional character from another film.

So, am I upset about this? A complete unknown needs some artistic freedom or because it doesn’t take enough? Frankly, as frustrating as it is, when the facts of the 1966 “Stone” performance at the Free Trade Hall are applied like a veneer to the significance of the 1965 Newport concert, it is the fault of Unknown lies in the latter.

There’s nothing internal about Dylan or his music at all A complete unknown This is close to Springsteen’s comment. Nothing is as explosive as this English concerto, which remains one of the most combative performances of the song ever. And nothing that opens the doors to anything.