Few actors have made a more remarkable run of success over the past decade than Timothée Chalamet. The actor went from a total unknown to headlining one of the biggest franchises in the world, and he has become beloved both by critics and by a legion of fans of all ages.
Now, Chalamet is back with his latest project, and this time, he’s taking on an icon. The first trailer for A Complete Unknown gives us a look at Chalamet’s Bob Dylan. The movie, which was directed by James Mangold, focuses on Dylan in the early part of his career in New York City and is set to conclude with the moment he “went electric” during a performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
The trailer includes looks at some of Dylan’s most famous hangout spots, including Cafe Wha?, the Gaslight, and the Chelsea Hotel. We also get to hear Chalamet doing his best Dylan singing “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” and we get glimpses of Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo and Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez. Fanning appears to be playing a fictional version of Dylan’s real girlfriend Suze Rotolo.
The cast also includes Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, P. J. Byrne as Harold Leventhal, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, and Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman.
The film is based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, and its title is a lyric from “Like a Rolling Stone,” the song that redefined Dylan’s legacy. Making a movie about Dylan is a major gamble, both because he’s already a ubiquitous force in the culture and because he has worked hard to make himself fundamentally unknowable. We’ll see if A Complete Unknown can change that picture.
