A Complete Unknown (Movie Review)

 

A Complete Unknown

Directed By: James Mangold

Written By: James Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Elijah Wald

A very young Bob Dylan arrives in New York City with hardly any money and no place to stay. He hasn't thought ahead very well. His main goal involves meeting his idol Woody Guthrie who is in a hospital suffering from some sort of disease that doesn't allow him to speak. When he visits him, one of Woody's friends, fellow folk legend Pete Seeger is visiting as well. The two musicians ask him to play them a song. Bob obliges and promptly impresses both men. Pete allows him to live at his house and once Bob gets his toe into the music world of New York City, there is no looking back.

I have to say, I am a big fan of Timothee Chalamet from the Dune movies so I always look forward to his work. He does a great job playing Dylan and especially his singing which at times is hard to delineate from the real McKoy. It's kinda funny, but I think ANYBODY with even a modicum of singing ability could do a good job imitating Dylan because, let's be frank, he is and was NOT a good singer. Chalamet conveys Dylan's understated personality well, maybe TOO well. This was the second time this week, the other being Nosferatu, that I sometimes had to struggle to understand what an actor was saying. 

Edward Norton comes off as a bit smarmy playing the goody two shoes Pete Seeger whose music landscape you almost want to see destroyed by Dylan. Seeger seems like a Mr. Rogers type who is too nice for his own good. 

I was really intrigued by the beauty and talent of Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. I guess she was in Top Gun: Maverick but I had no memory of her. I look forward to seeing more of her. I also loved Boyd Holbrook's portrayal of Johnny Cash in a small but pivotal role. 

While I enjoyed the actors in the movie I would say the weakness of the film was in its direction and writing. I felt that even after the end of the movie, Bob Dylan was STILL a complete unknown. He's like the Joker. We never learn the truth about his life, whether outer or inner. No real origin story. He comes on the scene with his talent and songs already fully formed, waiting to be discovered. I don't know where he was born, what his childhood was like, how he got into music and how he learned to play guitar. I do not know when he started writing songs, and what kind of literature he read. I don't really know if he ever really loved anyone or what he truly thought about anything. It's almost like the only inferences you can make about him is through his actions, not his words. His whole life is encrypted, and this movie is definitely not a cipher for it. 

I felt the script had way too many scenes of him playing a song for people and then close up of their face going "whoa, that song is amazing". Dylan just scrounges from place to place to write songs in people's houses or apartments and he has no human connection to the people in his life. They are just a convenient roof to write his songs under. His emotional connection to the people that love him is tenuous at best. He doesn't seem like a normal human being, more like a demi god who people are in awe of and fall in love with him but there is nothing given back. Similar to Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison in the Doors. Eccentric is saying it mildly. 

It was rated R I guess for a few F bombs. No nudity, no sex scenes etc. except for Monica in a t-shirt and panties (I give that scene an A+!) lol 

I would recommend seeing the movie for the performances, acting wise and music wise, but just know that if you want to learn anything about Bob Dylan, read a biography. 

My Grade: B-

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Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc (Book Review)

 

Empty Theatre
By Jac Jemc
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 
Print Price: $28

What you have in this book is two idiots who somehow find themselves both rulers, one of a kingdom, and the other a co-ruler of an empire. 

King Ludwig II of Bavaria would rather finance Richard Wagner's latest opera and build elaborate castles right out of chivalric romances than get down to the nitty gritty of ruling his land. He's been spoiled from the day he was born in terms of material wealth. Emotional support from his parents...well, let's just say its nonexistent. 

Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Ludwig's cousin, who is known better as simply Sisi, was caught up in the glamour of being wooed by an emperor, but quickly figures out that her role is more akin to a prisoner. Her mother-in-law, the Archduchess, controls everything and everyone is just concerned with Sisi being a baby factory for male heirs. Even when she has babies, the Archduchess whisks them away to be raised as royalty who have more attachment to her than her natural mother. 

Meanwhile, Ludwig is running his kingdom into the ground with all his wasteful financial expenditures while Sisi and her husband have to deal with the increasing nationalism spreading through their empire which will ultimately lead to a century of death and destruction in Europe. 

The novel generally alternates between chapters about Ludwig and Sisi from their young lives until their deaths with them corresponding and meeting each other from time to time.  The author Jac Jemc admits at the end of the book that she took a lot of liberties with the source material and says that the two real life figures themselves constructed a novel of their lives to suit their own viewpoints. 

Early on, you can tell the political stripe of Jemc when she says the Crusades "marked one of the darkest moments of human history, a pure and unveiled campaign of extermination, erasure, intolerance".  I guess she seemed to forget that the Arabs went on war campaigns all throughout the Mediterranean and conquered what used to be most of the Roman Empire. As for erasure, the Hagia Sophia USED to be a church. Once it was conquered by Muslims, it was converted to a mosque. Hmmm, erasure? I'm sure no innocent was killed in these wars right? Muslims good, Christians bad. 

Once I got past that moment of historical idiocy, I actually enjoyed the book. It recalled moments of Harry and Meghan in the sense that you have two people who act like they want to escape from the powers and duties of their rank but show no qualms in exercising that power when it suits their ends. Yes, I want absolute power but no responsibilities. I have no interest in the nuts and bolts of ruling. I have no interest in making my nation better. I have no interest in helping my people. 

I will say Sisi is the more morally sound of the two. She does try to help unfortunates from time to time, but she was more concerned with her hair and waistline instead of diplomacy or statecraft. They are both pretty revolting people really. Ludwig reminded me a bit of a foreshadowing of Michael Jackson, a person that had so much money they could insulate themselves from adulthood. Sisi too comes off as a child trapped in an adult body, who only towards her end was able to carve out spiritual space for herself. 

I enjoyed the book but it wasn't good enough to keep so I will definitely be putting it in the donation pile. Also, Jemc as an author did not really impress me enough to seek out another work by her. The ending of this novel was almost laughably bad right out of Elvis and Jim Morrison conspiracy theories. 

My Grade: B

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