“I don’t recommend anyone try and do cradle to grave biographies in film,” says James Mangold, discussing his approach to A Complete Unknown, his new film about folk musician Bob Dylan starring Timothée Chalamet. The director of Walk the Line and Ford v Ferrari brings a distinct philosophy to musical biopics. “A beginning doesn’t mean birth and the ending isn’t death. Those are just where life begins and ends. They give a false sense of beginning and end.”
For Mangold, the film’s opening sequence containsthe narrative seed that drives the entire project. “This idea of this young man traveling two thousand miles from Minnesota with his guitar and his notebook to find his dying hero (Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie) in a veterans hospital and sing him a song he had written for him was too magical not to want to see on film,” he explains.
The contrast between this earnest young pilgrim and the enigmatic figure Dylan would become particularly intrigued him. “Nothing about that journey strikes me as enigmatic or cool and aloof,” Mangold reflects. “It seems like the height of yearning, the peak of passion, the kind of total act of love and devotion to a musician to travel all this way with nothing in your pocket to sing them a song that is a tribute song.”
James Mangold. Photo by Mel Melcon/ Los Angeles Times/ Contour by Getty Images.
This pivotal moment launches a story that captures a transformative period in American music. “This kind of second lieutenant of the folk world in Pete Seeger (Ed Norton) who takes Bob under his wing and helps launch his career which ends up elevating the entire folk community to a level that it’s never ever attained again,” Mangold explains. “It was a once in a century kind of moment in which everyone was listening and talking about folk music and that’s largely due to Bob’s star power and songwriting genius.”
The Man Behind The Myth
Rather than approaching Dylan as a biographical subject, Mangold saw him as something more intriguing – a fable maker. “I was most interested in him as this kind of fable maker, this young man, instead of seeing it as a negative, like a liar or a fabricator. I saw it as a dreamer and someone who keeps trying to be the person he wishes he was,” he says. This perspective helped shape the film’s narrative approach, focusing on Dylan’s self-mythologizing as a window into his aspirations and inner life.
“You have to give yourself permission to write him and to fill in the cracks,” Mangold says of crafting Dylan as a character. This freedom led to some of the film’s most revealing moments, including a scene where Dylan contemplates the burden of genius, “People keep asking me where these songs come from, but they’re not asking where the songs come from, not really. They’re asking why the songs didn’t come to them.”
Mangold sees this as exploring “the kind of loneliness one feels as a genius” and the complex relationship between artistic notoriety and envy. As he explains, “With notoriety, artistic notoriety, comes envy, and you feel it… there is this natural antipathy you become aware of that is living out there braided into the admiration people have for you.”
A Musical Journey
While the film is rich in musical context, Mangold resists turning it into what he calls “a Wikipedia movie.” Instead of documentarian detail, he focuses on dramatic truth. “Part of what we’re supposed to do as dramatists is find a first act within a life and find a resolving moment or a tragic moment or a grace note in that life that resolves at least this chapter of that life.”
This approach shapes how music is integrated into the narrative. “When we first land on MacDougal Street, letting you hear the state of the art of what people are listening to, you’ve already gotten a micro lesson in folk music by the time Bob, nine minutes in, starts singing to Woody,” he notes. “Even the opening under the corporate logos at the front of the movie is hearing Woody Guthrie sing ‘So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh.’ You’re getting pulled into the flavor and context of folk music at that time.”
Drawing from his experience writing and directing Walk the Line, Mangold made a crucial decision about the musical performances. “I learned to let my actors sing and ignore all the voices who are like ‘it’ll sound so much better if…’ and just go authenticity is king,” he says. “If they want a Bob Dylan record, they can go f**king buy one. They’re here for a Bob Dylan movie and they want to see Timothy Chalamet in a Bob Dylan movie.”
Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
This commitment to authenticity extended beyond just the music. Meeting Dylan himself proved liberating for the creative process. “It was honestly so liberating when I finally met Bob and he had read my script and liked it,” Mangold recalls. He found Dylan to be “very alert, very articulate, a wonderful storyteller and really funny and knew movies backwards and forwards.”
The Fight for Film
Getting A Complete Unknown made wasn’t easy. “It was a six-year journey for Timmy and me to get this movie on the screen,” Mangold reveals. “We not only had to battle COVID and industry strikes and trying to hold our crew together through all these delays, but also studios are very nervous about spending the kind of money it takes to make a period musical film.”
This struggle reflects a larger challenge in contemporary filmmaking. When asked about the current state of adult dramas, Mangold pushes back against defeatism: “Who is ‘they’? Who doesn’t make these movies anymore? Because ‘they’ made 3:10 to Yuma and ‘they’ made A Complete Unknown.”
His advice to filmmakers remains practical, “Write a good script, attach a great actor, and at that point ,you not only have the power of the script and the power of whatever ability you have as a writer-director, but you now have the marketing muscle of this actor.”
Mangold sees his Dylan film as part of a continuing tradition of character-driven storytelling in American cinema. While the industry may have changed, the fundamental appeal of authentic, deeply felt narratives remains constant. As he puts it, “Stories should satisfy” – a simple but powerful reminder of cinema’s enduring purpose.
This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.
