Two timing: Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet in ‘A Complete Unknown’.
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN **** (141 minutes) M
When it comes to biopics it’s often said – quite rightly, too – how it’s well-nigh impossible to compress a whole life into a few short hours.
That’s not to say it can’t be done, and done well – Gandhi; Ray; Man on the Moon; Elvis; The Wolf of Wall Street; Rocketman; even Citizen Kane – yet the alternative approach suggests singling out and examining a key period in a great life.
That’s the take of A Complete Unknown, an outstanding Bob Dylan biopic that pulls focus on the folk singer’s early years, chronicling his arrival in New York as a nobody and his rise to the brink of superstardom.
In yet another deeply impressive turn, Timothée Chalamet inhabits Dylan to a D, from diffident newcomer to rising star to ego-centric, self-consciously rebellious troublemaker.
We see him emerge onto the scene in tiny, smoke-filled music venues before being taken up by label executives and entering the dubious privilege of the studio, where success is promised as long as he does as instructed.
He gets the full measure of the demanding road ahead when he goes behind the back of girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning) and starts a relationship with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whose scene status and record sales keep him humble – at least temporarily.
Based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, director James Mangold (Cop Land; Walk the Line; Logan) surrounds Chalamet with great supporting turns.
Key among them is Ed Norton as folk legend Pete Seeger, who first meets the young Dylan when he ambles into a hospital room to sing to Huntington-afflicted Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy). They give him his start.
Also crucial to Dylan – and here’s something a lot of oldies probably don’t know – was country giant Johnny Cash, with whom Dylan enjoyed a long penpal relationship. Boyd Holbrook is great in the role.
As is Barbaro as Baez (vividly replicating her beauty), Fanning as the semi-fictionalised girlfriend and Dan Fogler as folk music uber-producer Albert Grossman.
One of the big treats here is how the cast do all their own performing, so there are none of those awkward cuts and camera moves trying to hide body doubles or fake fingers as they pluck at a fretboard. It really boosts the film’s authentic feel, which Mangold (who co-wrote with Jay Cocks) nails every time the music keys in.
Beyond that are the film’s killer production values. Whether we’re at a music festival, in a cafe, a record store, a hotel room or out in the New York streets the frame brims with exacting period detail, most of it unobtrusively in the background. Oldies will love it.
The standard for this sort of attention to period authenticity seems to continually rise.
It’s a bewildering irony that the further away filmmakers are from the time setting of their movies the more accurately they are able to recreate it.
Here, all that work enhances the real feel of a terrific look into the formative years of one of music’s most formidable and influential talents, whose legendary ego and insouciance is perfectly captured.
THE BRUTALIST *** (215 minutes) MA
The big question about The Brutalist isn’t whether or not it’s good, it’s whether or not it’s that good.
Showered in rave reviews and given a swag of industry, festival and critic awards – including a few largely worthless Golden Globes (somebody’s got to say it) – there’s no question The Brutalist offers an immersive cinematic buffet for arthouse stalwarts who respond to evocative cinematography, fabulous, nuance-rich performances and, to be sure, a decidedly unhurried pace.
Adrien Brody puts in a stellar central portrayal as László Tóth, a Hungarian architect who seeks a new post-war life in the promised land of America after surviving Buchenwald. Unfortunately his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) is stuck in a detention camp run by the Russians.
While working for his cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola) in his furniture firm, László falls into the orbit of industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) who puts him to work on a community centre, a special project intended as a tribute to Van Buren’s mother.
Much if the film is taken up with the ins and outs of designing and building the monument, with all the attendant conflicts and compromises you’d expect.
Entwined in all this is the evolving relationship László has with post-war America and how the promise of living in a land of freedom and opportunity squares with his reality.
The main performances are fine indeed, with Pearce again demonstrating how versatile and convincing he can be.
Shot on film and in old-school VistaVision, the piece looks great. Hands down, a beautiful-looking picture.
Still, the narrative has its lapses and longueurs, along with a few clichés. It seems you can’t make a film these days without incorporating sexual assault or drug addiction. Is there an unwritten rule?
To the credit of director Brady Corbet (who co-wrote with Mona Fastvold) the film generally burns through its time well.
That said, while we applaud the audacity of a filmmaker who presents a film of such length (with an intermission) to cinema audiences as a throwback to the epics of yore, the inevitable counter to such an offering is “why not just wait for the thing to hit the stream?”
It’s a good question. Does The Brutalist have enough to justify subjecting yourself to such a bladder test?
Obviously, if you’re made of sterner stuff than most, the marathon has its rewards, especially if you go to a morning session and score a near-empty cinema.
Frankly, though, the film does feel like a two-part limited series, something that will play well enough on a home theatre where you can have as many intermissions as you wish, as well as being free of the myriad distractions and annoyances that have become such a big part of 21st-century movie going.
As for its prospects, and with all the critical adulation aside, the film might find itself at odds with the mood of the room about America right now.
It might not last, but there is a general spirit of renewal and optimism about the immediate future. That might not prove so receptive to a long movie studded with gobs of cynicism about the place.