A Complete Unknown (15) at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

A Complete Unknown (15)

★★★ Timothée Chalamet is brilliant and believable in James Mangold's conventional Dylan biopic. ~ BBC.

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Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan in the ballad of a true original.

A Film by James Mangold. Co-starring Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, and Monica Barbaro.

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★★★★ Don’t think twice about seeing this brilliant Bob Dylan biopic. ~ NME.

★★★★★ Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan is an electric revelation, brilliantly embodying his shapeshifting allure, in James Mangold’s biopic which follows the rise of the era-defining star. ~ The Guardian.

★★★★★ Chalamet is at his best as the arrogant songwriter in a marvellous, surprising, revelatory movie. ~ Sunday Times.

★★★★ This is an extraordinary performance, far deeper than an impersonation, that charts the progress of the young singer-songwriter as the times were a’changin’. ~ Evening Standard.

★★★★ What the film shows brilliantly is the way that music in the right hands becomes a weapon. ~ The Observer.

★★★★ Chalamet, springing up here and there like a jack in the box, does a good job of capturing Dylan as what he always was and always will be - completely unknowable.. ~ RTE.

★★★★ The rocker is too mercurial a figure for a biopic to ever fully capture him – but this gorgeous film comes as close as you could hope. ~ The Telegraph.

★★★★ It will be interesting to see if Dylan purists let out their own “Judas” cries over this unrigid interpretation of their hero (that 1965 incident, for example, is transplanted from Manchester to Newport). ~ Irish Independent.

★★★★ In one of the most complex and convincing interpretations of a real-life musician ever seen on film, Chalamet achieves - imagined in places, perhaps, but nonetheless - a cool, charismatic Dylan who should strike a chord with all but the most reticent of his followers. ~ Radio Times.

★★★★ ~ Financial Times.

★★ Worst of all, it lazily stages the famous “Judas!” heckle at Newport rather than the Manchester Free Trade Hall where it actually happened. Sure, Bob Dylan was no stickler for the truth when it came to concocting his own mythos, but at least through his sublime poetry he was able to revel essential, obscure truths about the world. James Mangold has yet to earn that right. ~ Little White Lies.