The Known and The Complete Unknown

In the spring of 1969 Americia and a 15-year-old boy were stepping out of the poisonous whirlwind of the previous year and into the gagging fart that was 1969.

If you were that fifteen-year-old wanting to understand what had happened and what was still happening in the world, and you were living in Norman Oklahoma there was just one place to go. Rickner's bookstore.

Located in an area known as Campus Corner Rickner's was situated on the end of Asp and Boyd.

In 1969, as Richard Nixon began his defiling of America Campus Corner was the Oklahoma hub for the already diminishing counterculture.

Head shops, record shops where every possible inch of wall space was covered with posters of the Doors, Janis and Jimi.

Clothing stores where I got my first pair of pants brought with my own money. Multicolored with yellow pinstripes and bell bottoms. A style that was on its last legs. Bad joke intended. (Possibly it was on the way was because the Jr high toughs were spreading the rumor that pinstripe pants cause impotence. Given how many of their lives ended up they should have been so lucky), thrift stores with buttons and posters from the previous year's political campaigns and protest movements. The poor people's march on Washington D.C. Buttons for the RFK and Gene McCarthy peace campaigns sitting side by side in a way the candidate never could. Even half a century ago we liberals were better at fighting each other than the destructive rages of the right.

There were four bookstores in the immediate vicinity. Including one that specialized in books that counseled the reader on how to avoid the draft. (Getting the top bunk and pissing on yourself and making a pass at your sergeant were the most popular choices.)

Rickner's, however was the place to go if you wanted to take the intellectual pulse of the times. Mailer, Updike, Jack Newfield and it is where I brought my first Bob Dylan album.

Until then my musical tastes revolved around showtunes and novelty songs detailing Snoopy's never ending battle with the Red Barron.

One Friday afternoon in late April having decided that Third period science and fourth period gym class were just too much of a burden to endure i followed the tradition of dilettantes everywhere and cut class.

Sneaking around the elderly truant officer, who was rumored to be the first receipt of social Security. Keeping an eye for the Norman PD, who I was sure was being mobilized to find me.

Entering this place that i had come to value more than my own home I strolled in wonder around the oak tables and spinning metal racks with books leaning out of them. Back, past the biographies, political histories I was consuming with a rapid frenzy was a wall, painted bright white. Nailed to the wall were bins stuffed full of records.

Cream, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, all there.

My eyes landed on an album cover. a young man who looked even younger than my fifteen-year-old self was ambling down a street, a pretty girl hanging on arm, a shy knowing smile on his face, his slumped body an act of rebellion similar to James Dean's posture in Rebel Without a Cause.

Flipping the album over and checking out the playlist I saw that Blowing in the wind (one of the more interesting scenes in the film is where the Dylan character complains that everyone just wants him to keep singing Blowing in the Wind.) was on the record. Sale made.

I could write serval more of whatever the computer calls pages on Dylan and my relationship to his music, but this is a review of the movie A Complete Unknown. So, let's do that.

Complete Unknown is a near flawless film. Visually the look is perfect. One can taste early 1960s Greenwich Village. Creatively energy was spilling out of the Village and into the main blood stream of the country during the time of this movie.

As expected, this film about one of the greatest musicians of the last sixty-five years has superb sound. Not just the music, also the conservations, street noise attuned to just the right decimal.

The real vintage wine of this film is the acting. Timothee Chalamet, Ed Norton and Monica Barbaro all do excellent job handling the problems inherit in the biopic genre.

Because there are problems with the genre and i you want a deep dive into the problems with biopic's I strongly suggest going on YouTube and watch the fantastic video essays of Broey Deschanel. She is the most insightful movie essayist producing content on YouTube or anywhere else in our media saturated universe. Her 2022 video, "Elvis and the Utter Mediocrity of Biopics is quite attuned to the flaws of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis movie.

While I don't totally agree with Ms. Deschanel distaste for biopics this essay certainly accurately sums up the problems with this genre.

Broey Deschanel is the best observer of movies around right now I urge everyone to join me in subscribing to her YouTube channel. Which I do under my possible, most likely wife's name. It's a long story.

A Complete Unknow doesn't come close to falling into any of the trapdoors that biopics can fall though.

Director James Mangold deserves a great deal of the credit for the film avoiding the usual biopic pratfalls. Major credit most go to the as previously mentioned cast.

I was taken aback at how controlled and nuanced Ed Norton's performance as Pete Seeger was. Yes, there's the saintly Pete Seeger. Gandhi/King in one body. There's also the Seeger feeling betrayed by Dylan at the 1965 Newport folk festival responds by trashing the electric dashboards that are emanating Dylan's heretic flirtation with rock.

Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez is a delight. Like Norton Barbaro gives us a performance with vast, but subtle range. It is full of folk music, Mother Earth goodness. Not so much that she can't see though some of the bullshit going on around her when she needs too. that smooth transition from Angel to Avenger and back gives dimension to Baez that other portrayals haven't.

My response to Timothee Chalamet's presence in the cinematic arts has roughly been similar to my reactions to boy bands. Pleasent, but not really worth my attention.

A Complete Unknown proves that particular opinion to be worthless.

Chalamet's Dylan is a wonderful stew of contractions and contradictions. A man who could be unfailing kind to an ailing Woody Guthrie and casually cruel to Sylvie Russo (ably played by

Elle Fanning.)

Complete Unknow is full biopic that shows all of the human flaws and virtues that define a person and a genius.

Since this post is concerned with folk music i would like to take this moment to say, RIP to Peter Yarrow. You too were an important part of my youthful education.