Director James Mangold, author of the remarkable biopic Walk the Line (2005) on Johnny Cash with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (the actress won an Oscar), chose Timothée Chalamet to play young Bob Dylan in A complete strangerexpected in theaters Wednesday January 29 in France.
If the film rests on the shoulders of the young actor aged 29, he is however surrounded by an impeccable cast. Edward Norton (great) plays his early mentor Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro plays a convincing Joan Baez and Elle Fanning gracefully plays his first New York girlfriend.
Without spoiling the film, here’s what you need to know before seeing it, regarding the elements on which the biopic is based, as well as the filming and the way in which Timothée Chalamet slipped into the skin of the folk legend and world rock.
1The film chronicles Bob Dylan’s early career
The film does not tell in detail the life and long career of Bob Dylan, 83 years old. It focuses on a key period, from his penniless arrival in New York in 1961, at the age of 19, from his native Minnesota, to his controversial conversion to electricity, recorded during from a 1965 concert at the Newport Folk Festival, when he was just 24 years old. The screenplay is based on the book by Elijah Wald Bob Dylan Electric, Newport 1965, from folk to rock, story of a coup d’étatpublished in 2015. A work that Bob Dylan himself recently recommended reading after seeing the film.
So, a coup d’état, really? Yes, in any case a resounding gesture of rebellion, a real revolution. Let’s recall the context: at the beginning of the 1960s, Bob Dylan’s notoriety first took off via other artists who popularized his songs, Peter, Paul and Mary (Blowin’ in the Wind) to Joan Baez (Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right). Then Bob Dylan’s talent as an author, singer and musician was refined, and the poet hitherto considered an outsider made a resounding breakthrough, in 1963, with the committed songs Masters of Warwhich denounces the military-industrial complex, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, written during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Here he has become, at the age of 22, a folk icon adored by the crowds and the emblem of a generation, a label and a status that he will strive to deconstruct. Because Bob Dylan has always loved rockabilly, country, blues and rhythm & blues, and did not intend to let himself be confined either by folk or by protesters. Hence the major gesture of rebellion that was his electric set at the Newport folk festival in 1965, which earned him insults and disapproval from part of the public and the organizers, while creating a shock wave which made his music take off. international notoriety.
2Bob Dylan contributed to the screenplay
James Mangold did not originally plan to meet Bob Dylan. But the meeting took place.”because he had read the script” and that “He wanted to know what kind of guy I was and what I was up to.”tells the director Rolling Stone. During the pandemic, he even met him numerous times in Los Angeles.
Because if he was not present on the set, Zim not only took the time to read the script co-written by James Mangold and Jay Cocks, but he also suggested ideas to him: “He gave me the benefit of his knowledge and information regarding this period, pushing me to dig deeper into certain scenes”the filmmaker told Business Insider. “It was a huge gift.” The Nobel Prize winner, always known for his taste for mischievous fabrication, even insisted on adding a fictional scene that exegetes are still trying to identify, actor Ed Norton told Rolling Stone.
According to the film’s producer Peter Jaysen, Dylan attended an entire read-aloud of the script with James Mangold, with Bob silently reading the dialogue assigned to him. During this process, Dylan carefully annotated the script, a document that Timothée Chalamet unsuccessfully begged Mangold to pass to him for months. “At the end of the reading session with James Mangold, he [Dylan] signed the script and he said “Go with God” (May God be with you).”
3Timothée Chalamet really sings
Initially, Timothée Chalamet had to have four months to prepare to embody the myth Bob Dylan. In the end, thanks to delays due to Covid and then the 2023 strikes in Hollywood, he had five years to refine his role. He started out knowing almost nothing about the author of Blowin’ in the Wind and he finished as a true disciple. “Once I started, there was no going back.”explains the actor in the production notes. “I converted to the religion of Bob Dylan.”
-In the end, Timothée Chalamet sings and plays live – without playback or overdub – during all the musical parts of the film. And it’s stunning. To tame and appropriate Dylan’s style and master around twenty songs from his model’s repertoire (which are also the subject of an album), the Franco-American actor worked with a vocal coach, a teacher guitar, a harmonica teacher, a diction coach and a movement coach.
Elle Fanning confesses in Rolling Stone having shed a tear while attending a real concert during filming, during which Chalamet performed Masters of War et A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. “We were in shock. It was perfect, but it wasn’t a caricature. It was always Timmy, but also Bob, blended together wonderfully.” Exactly what James Mangold wanted, who didn’t want it.that Timothée disappears behind the character” more “on the contrary, he imbues Bob with his own personality“.
4Dylan had his girlfriend’s name changed
Bob Dylan’s romantic relationship with his first New York girlfriend, played by Elle Fanning, is at the emotional heart of the film – superimposed on his relationship with Joan Baez. But unlike the other characters, who retain their real name, this one was renamed Sylvie Russo even though she is strongly inspired by the real Suze Rotolo. It was Bob Dylan who asked that her real name not be used, out of modesty for this woman he once described as “the possible dream lover of a lifetime“, and whose memory he intended to protect.
But who was Suze Rotolo? Died by lung cancer in 2011, she met Bob Dylan in New York at the age of 17, during one of his first concerts, at Riverside Church, when he was still unknown. A designer and painter, Suze was an intellectual, actively involved in student movements in favor of civil rights. In doing so, she was very important in his political and cultural development, introducing him to both the New York artistic and political scenes, but also the texts of Rimbaud, Brecht and Artaud, painters like Kandinsky and Picasso and films like Don’t shoot the pianist by François Truffaut.
“From the start, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was the most erotic thing I had ever seen. (…) We started talking and my heart fluttered… She was just my type.”wrote Dylan in his memoirs about his meeting with the woman who was his first muse and who inspired some of his most beautiful songs, including Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Boots of Spanish Leather et Ballad in Plain D. It is she who we see arm in arm with him in a snowy street in New York, on the cover of his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
5Chalamet was dubbed by Dylan himself
It was December 4, a few weeks before the film’s release in the United States. In a message on X, Bob Dylan wrote: “There’s a film about me coming out soon, called A Complete Stranger (what a title!). Timothée Chalamet plays the main role. Timmy is a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’ll be totally believable as me. Finally a younger me. Or another me. The title is taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Electric, a book published in 2015. It’s a terrific account of the events of the early 1960s that led to the Newport fiasco. After watching the movie, read the book!”
This is so far the only public comment on the film by Bob Dylan, of which even the director does not know whether he has seen it or intends to see it. In response, Timmy said to himself “stunned” and thanked the icon, who had become a sort of mentor for him. “Bob refused to be pigeonholed. For a young artist like me, it’s a real inspiration.”
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