ExNotes Review: A Complete Unknown

By Joe Berk

I don’t go to the movies too much anymore, although the theatres have dramatically improved their seating and some even sell complete meals you can eat while watching the movie.  We have Netflix, Prime, and Max at home, once in a while I’ll watch something on regular TV besides Fox News, and we pretty much have all the home entertainment needs covered with our TV and the aforementioned subscriptions.  Susie wanted to see the new Bob Dylan show, though, and I thought it might be good to get out for a bit.

A fake Dylan filming a fake motorcycle scene.

As movies go, A Complete Unknown was not too bad.  The Joan Baez sound tracks were great, as was Zimmerman’s music (I’ll bet you didn’t know Bobby Zimmerman was beatnikized into Bob Dylan, did you?).

I have to comment on the motorcycle scenes, though…after all, this is a motorcycle website.

In the very first Dylan motorcycle scene, he’s riding an early Norton Atlas.  You don’t see too many of those with their black trapezoidal fuel tanks and huge chrome valanced fenders, so it had my attention.  In all the remaining motorcycle scenes, Dylan is on a mid-’60s Triumph Tiger.   He didn’t wear a helmet in any of those scenes, and the action was ostensibly set in New York City.  Seeing a helmetless Dylan slicing through Manhattan traffic made me uneasy, even though I knew it was all Hollywood tomfoolery.  The really goofy parts were the closeup riding scenes in which Dylan’s ample curls were unruffled by cruising speed winds, and the 500cc Triumph starting without Dylan using the Triumph’s sole wakeruppery mechanism (i.e., a kickstarter).  Nope, the moto scenes were as fake as a Joe Biden promise, and that made me put A Complete Unknown in the Complete Fake column.

Like I said above, the music was good.  Somewhere there’s a probably a Scriptwriting for Dummies guide that says a movie has to have conflict injected into the plot, so in this flick it was Dylan doing “his music” at the Newport Folk Festival instead of their desired folk music.  Dylan and Pete Seeger almost started a fist fight over that (I know, it’s silly, but I’m just reporting here, folks).  At the concert’s end Dylan sang one folk song, so all was forgiven.

I can’t leave out the best part:  Johnny Cash (played by a real complete unknown, Boyd Holbrook) was in the movie and he was superb.  If anyone ever does another Johnny Cash movie, casting anyone other than Holbrook in that role would be a crime against nature.

If you can ignore the motorcycle phoniness, A Complete Unknown is worth the price of admission.  The motorcycle inaccuracies notwithstanding, I enjoyed it and I think you will, too.


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12 thoughts on “ExNotes Review: A Complete Unknown”

  1. Fake riding.
    Well you just ruined the movie for me.
    I never saw an image of the real Dylan riding while wearing a helmet .
    It is good to get out now and then .
    But I also got Max and Netflix so I guess i wait until the movie hits one or the other.

  2. A little push back. Those motorcycles were provided by and curated during the filming by Dave Shotzkewicz of Classic Cycles Ltd in Frenchtown, NJ (nearly the entire movie was filmed in the Garden State, and there ‘Newport’ festival took place in Cape May.) Dave was on set the entire time, and Chalemet did indeed ride (and kickstart) the bikes. I was very happy to see authentic, period correct motorbikes so vividly on display in a modern, big budget film.

    On an associated note, many of the cars were provided by Jamie Kitman’s Octane Film Cars, and there was a good array, including a Renault Dauphine, a car that my brother once owned.

    As for the conflict at the Folk Festival, it was real, and well documented, including Pete Seeger almost unplugging Dylan mid- set with an axe. Yes, it was a movie, not a documentary, so some liberties were taken for the broader non- Dylanophile audience. But every film based on a real- life icon did the same. See Patton. I really enjoyed the pic.

  3. All bio films are BS. How can you tell a life story in 2 hours? Well, I guess you can if you leave most of it out and make up a bunch of the rest. And dialog from 1967? Like he had a secretary following him around shorthanding everything he said? Of course not so all the dialog is just made up by the writers. Never really see them because I know its all Hollywood BS.

    1. Who’d a thunk a movie review would elicit such strong responses? Maybe it’s time for ExNotes to start doing politics.

  4. Never liked Bob Dylan or his so-called music. This is one movie I will not be seeing. The PBS channel had a special on Dylan recently and I normally watch PBS specials but not this time!

  5. Mr. Holbrook is from our small eastern Kentucky town. His mother, who still lives here, bought all the tickets at a local theater for friends and relatives to get a chance to see the film. He’s been in several movies, including the lead in a Predator film a few years ago and in the Logan film. He was also in the Hatfields and McCoys mini series. His resume is quite impressive.

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