Timothée Chalamet showed off more of his singing chops in the new trailer for “A Complete Unknown,” James Mangold’s bio-drama about Bob Dylan.
The new footage shows Chalamet singing “Girl From the North Country” as he arrives in New York from Minnesota. He begins to cozy up to fellow folk singer Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro) as the two spark a romance.
“Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist’s office,” he tells her, clutching a guitar while shirtless in bed. At the kitchen sink, Baez responds, “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”
The trailer also features footage of Dylan and Baez duetting at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival. A love triangle brews as Elle Fanning arrives as Sylvie Russo, a fictionalized version of Dylan’s then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who appears on the album cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”
As Dylan becomes more frustrated with being pigeonholed as the voice behind “Blowin’ in the Wind,” he changes everything by strapping on an electric guitar with “Like a Rolling Stone.” Brawls break out as half of Dylan’s fans marvel at the new direction and half view him as a traitor to folk music.
Following a barrage of paparazzi photos that leaked out of the set in the spring, Searchlight Pictures released the first trailer for the film, in which Chalamet sings a rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” in late July.
Speaking to Variety, a dozen Bob Dylan experts expressed cautious optimism toward “A Complete Unknown,” praising Chalamet’s performance of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” “Does he nail the voice? God, you could be picky about it. But he does it seriously well. He gets across the passion and the soul in Bob Dylan’s voice without making it sound like karaoke,” said KG Miles, author of “Bob Dylan in the Big Apple,” “Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas” and other books.
“A Complete Unknown” is written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, and based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric!” The rest of the cast includes Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, P. J. Byrne as Harold Leventhal, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman and Will Harrison as Bob Neuwirth, among others.
“A Complete Unknown” is produced by Fred Berger, Alex Heineman, Peter Jaysen, Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer, Jeff Rosen, Chalamet and Mangold.
Watch the new trailer below.
