Chalamet is on a tear.
What a masterpiece, despite the fact lots of folks see Fievel rather than Dylan!
01/16/2025 Update: Tonight I will see A Complete Unknown in the theater for the ninth and final time. I took Dawn a couple nights ago; tonight I take Lauren.
Why so many times? Because Chalamet's performance is a hat trick:
- He's made me love Dylan. I created a playlist and have been ingesting 'all things Dylan' for three weeks straight. That's nothing short of a miracle, because I've always thought Dylan sounded like an alley cat getting squelched over by a car.
- He is Dylan. There's no point in the film where Chalamet's fame or persona polluted his portrayal of another human being (and a singular, iconic one at that). His singing, his affectations, the works—all Dylan all the time.
- He carries 2 hours and 20 minutes of this massive film and makes it look like balsa wood. Easy as pie.
More broadly, EVERYONE is perfect in this film: Edward Norton, Eriko Hatsune, Elle Fanning, and especially Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez (what a departure from Top Gun!). The performances left me speechless.
A Complete Unknown is as great a film as anything I saw in 2024, and 12,000 viewers put it at 7.8 on IMDB—a remarkable feat.
My only fear is that come Oscar night, A Complete Unknown (and everyone in it) will lose to Nickel Boys, just as La La Land lost to Moonlight.
Nickel Boys is incredible, but A Complete Unknown is otherworldly.
Here's hoping the Academy can still see that through all the smoke in L.A.
They submit their final votes this coming weekend, January 19th to be precise.................................
