Keen On

As the author of the well-received Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet, Seth Rogovoy knows his Dylan. So his critical review of the A Complete Unknown, the much hyped new movie featuring Timothee Chamalat as a young Dylan, is worth noting. Rogovoy questions the whole point of the movie, arguing that nobody - neither enthusiasts nor newbies to Dylan - learn anything from A Complete Unknown. And as the music historian Rogovoy - whose latest historical biography is of George Harrison - explains, this cinematic failure to present Bob Dylan in any kind of coherent framework probably reflects our broader contemporary cultural crisis. A Complete Unknown is a blob of a movie for our age of ubiquitous elevator music. Culture is simultaneously all around us and nowhere at all. The timing may just right for a new Dylan. But not for Timothee Chamalat’s one dimensional man.Seth Rogovoy is the author of Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford University Press, October 1, 2024), Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poe