If you follow any and/or all platforms for Timothée Chalamet news—your friends at Esquire, Club Chalamet, Timmy’s socials—you know that he’s starring in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, titled A Complete Unknown. You’re also probably aware that he’s sporting a tiny moustache and an oversized suit for his upcoming film Marty Supreme, but we’re here today for his Dylan-esque Wayfarers and shirt jackets. After months of waiting, we finally have another full trailer of Lil’ Timmy Tim’s transformation into Dylan. And he sounds damn great.
Chalamet-Dylan starts singing just ten seconds into the preview, brandishing a nearly pitch-perfect rendition of "Girl from the North Country." If the trailer is anything to go by, the performance follows Dylan's 1960 arrival in New York all the way to his legendary electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The film also stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, and Elle Fanning as his romantic interest. (According to Fanning, her character Sylvie Russo is “roughly based off” the artist’s ex-girlfriend Suze Rotolo.) For now, though, let’s all just appreciate that Chalamet’s prep for his Dylan transformation—more on that below—paid off. You can watch the full trailer for A Complete Unknown below.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s James Mangold directed Chalamet in the film, which will debut this Christmas. If you’re not familiar with Dylan's historic and controversial Newport Folk Festival electric set, know that his folk songs were celebrated as representation for the downtrodden. (See: “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind”.) So when Dylan unleashed his all-electric performance of “Like a Rolling Stone” at the famous event, many music figures saw it as a major betrayal. As you can guess by the trailer, Chalamet will take on all of the film’s singing duties, as opposed to those in Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody, which had the help of voice-blending technology.
Mangold is something of an expert in the music-legend biopic, having also directed 2005’s Johnny Cash film, Walk the Line. “Timmy is working his ass off right as we speak,” Mangold said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023. “I couldn’t have more confidence in him and in all the others joining in. Not unlike making an Indiana Jones movie, the expectations are high but so is the camaraderie and the love among us. We’ve all been essentially working on this movie for the last three years. So there’s been a lot of preparation. When Covid took us offline, no one stopped. Writing, rehearsing, Timmy playing guitar and working. Probably took it with him through every Dune, and probably was playing guitar as he was riding a worm.”
Guitar playing and worm riding? At the same time? Now, that I have to see.
