Some Thoughts on the Dylan Biopic

I got the opportunity to see the new Dylan movie at an advance screening a couple nights ago. And I wanted to share a few thoughts about it. I don’t know how to write a movie review. And I don’t know enough about movies to write one anyway. These are just some of my reactions.

First, for a tl;dr: I liked it. I recommend it. Especially if you’re at all a fan of Bob Dylan.

I’m a difficult audience for this kind of film. I know every detail and anecdote from the history the movie chronicles — each meeting, plot point, verbal exchange, performance. That’s not bragging. It’s an admission. I’m way too deep into this stuff. What that means is that it’s really hard for a biopic to recreate or dramatize these events in a way that does not seem, at least for me, sentimental, cliched, overdone. Even if you don’t know all the details as an obsessive, this material has been discussed and mythologized endlessly. How can it possibly be fresh? Biopics such as these often have a stations-of-the-cross air to them, with the hero floating from one iconic moment to the next. So there’s like a Sword of Damocles of cliche and treacleiness hanging over a project like this.

But for me, Like a Complete Unknown managed to avoid this pitfall, which surprised me. The sword doesn’t come down.

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