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Timothée Chalamet’s turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown earned praise from critics, including Rolling Stone’s David Fear, but like any biopic, some details and facts get left out or rearranged. The notoriously mercurial Dylan, who had input in the James Mangold biopic, even slipped a made-up scene into the movie.
The movie is based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, which documents Dylan’s pivotal 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival. His plugged-in performance of “Like A Rolling Stone” was controversial among festival attendees, who expected an acoustic set.
The Timothée Chalamet film isn’t the first time this iconic era for Bob Dylan’s career has been documented — here’s what Dylan fans should read (and watch) after seeing A Complete Unknown.
Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties
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Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! is the direct inspiration for A Complete Unknown. The book delves deep into Bob Dylan’s Newport Folk Festival performance, in which he performed with an electric guitar and was backed by an amplified band, signaling a shift away from his politically focused acoustic folk music.
Don’t Look Back
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Filmed the same year that A Complete Unknown is set, Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back is an intimate portrait of Dylan on tour. Directed by D. A. Pennebaker, the 1967 documentary is streaming on Max and Hulu. It’s also available as a Blu-Ray or DVD from the Criterion collection.
No Direction Home
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Martin Scorsese’s love of classic rock runs deep, and the director has made two documentaries about Bob Dylan since 2005. No Direction Home focuses on the same era as A Complete Unknown (in fact, both films take their titles from “Like a Rolling Stone” lyrics). Scorsese’s most acclaimed film to feature Dylan is The Last Waltz, which is about The Band (which had a stint as Dylan’s backing band during his electric era). His most recent is Rolling Thunder Revue, released in 2019 and available on Netflix. No Direction Home is not widely available on streaming services, but Prime members can stream it with a free trial to Quello Concerts, and the movie is available with afree standalone trial to the service.
Festival (The Criterion Collection)
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The 1967 film Festival chronicles the Newport Folk Festival from 1963-1966, including the infamous 1965 Bob Dylan performance at the heart of A Complete Unknown. It features performances from other musicians featured in A Complete Unknown, including Pete Seeger and Joan Baez.
I’m Not There
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For a decidedly more experimental take on Dylan’s life, I’m Not There stars six actors from different eras of Dylan’s career. The film, directed by Todd Haynes, embraces Dylan’s penchant for reinvention and obfuscation by casting actors as varied as Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger as characters inspired by Dylan and his influences. The film is streaming on Prime, for free with a library card with Kanopy, or free with ads on Pluto.
