The Hollywood prodigy in the skin of the folk icon: Timothée Chalamet puts on Bob Dylan's guitar in “A Perfect Stranger”, the highly anticipated biopic which looks back on the singer's first steps, in theaters Wednesday.
“I was a little afraid that it would become yet another Hollywood biopic,” confided the actor about this role, in which he himself sings Dylan's greatest hits, from “Blowin' in the Wind ” to “The Times They Are A-Changin'”.
The film (02:20), which garnered eight Oscar nominations on Thursday, is by James Mangold. The filmmaker had already directed a Johnny Cash biopic, “Walk The Line”, with Joaquin Phoenix, but also the latest “Indiana Jones” and “Le Mans 66”.
Far from the gentle madness of Todd Haynes' “I'm Not There”, released in 2007, in which six different actors played Dylan, this “Perfect Stranger” ticks the more classic boxes of the well-documented fan film.
Mangold chose to focus on the early 1960s, the very first years of the artist's career, since his arrival in New York with a guitar on his back, his first steps with the big names of folk including Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) and alongside Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).
“We really got into this world of the 1960s… We completely ignored the (modern) ways of living, with phones and stuff like that, anything that could distract us,” Chalamet said .
On Dylan's very beginnings, “there are very few video archives available, there are only a few demos, so there is a certain freedom” to interpret the character, he recalled.
– Nostalgia –
The film marks a new stage in the rise of the 29-year-old actor to 20 million subscribers on Instagram. Revealed in “Call Me By Your Name” by Luca Guadagnino, he is also Paul Atréides, headliner of the science fiction saga “Dune” by Denis Villeneuve.
-Before Dylan's harmonica and six-string, Chalamet had already demonstrated his vocal talents in the family musical “Wonka.”
An artistic genius, rather clean on him in this production of a Disney subsidiary, his Dylan does not completely hide his dark side. That of a tormented young designer and a seed of a star who will never achieve fame, ruthless with the women he frequents, including his first girlfriend, played by Elle Fanning.
It was this element of mystery in Dylan, now 83 years old, that attracted the director.
“Dylan loves music and loves sharing it, but he doesn't like having to answer questions about it. His music is his gift,” he told AFP. “Dylan has written 55 albums full of personal music. But people still say he's mysterious.”
The political charge of the “protest songs” of the time is also present on screen, against the backdrop of the fight for civil rights. What would make Chalamet nostalgic as American President Donald Trump takes office?
“I think that if there is a nostalgia, it is because, in the 1960s, this type of music and artists, like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or (the author) James Baldwin, did not had no precedent,” he replied to AFP.
“Today, there is a stronger cynicism. For the young American, French and also global generation, the obstacles are perhaps more intense than in the 1960s, the environmental or political obstacles,” he said. -he analyzed.
