You could say Timothee Chalamet is on just a bit of a heater lately. Although the writers and actors strikes pushed back Dune: Part Two‘s theatrical release and Chalamet’s turn as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, that almost worked out better in the bigger picture of the actor’s exploding career.
The holiday season release of Wonka where Chalamet played the titular character was a raging success, and the second entry in the Dune franchise is another commercial and critical success.
Those two projects only build the massive anticipation for what Chalamet is going to do next, which could be his most challenging role to date. Stepping into Willy Wonka’s shoes in a companion piece to the character originated on screen by Gene Wilder has its own pressures and trappings. Chalamet sidestepped all of those pitfalls to deliver an excellent performance. Then, in a decidedly different but pivotal role of Paul Atreides in the ongoing Dune saga, he received top billing in a loaded ensemble cast and knocked it out of the park.
One of the simultaneous blessings and curses of that level of achievement is that Chalamet keeps raising the bar for himself and the expectations for any character he takes on. And that brings us to Chalamet embodying a young Bob Dylan, which he’s been preparing for literal years to do. This post from Mangold alone would’ve been enough to get me going:
This may or may not be a photoshop creation, or if it’s some black-and-white version of a photo released from the movie. Either way, you can see the striking resemblance between Dylan and Chalamet.
But there’s nothing quite like seeing the real thing come to life, which is what fans have been treated to in both official images and unofficial/bootlegged snapshots of Chalamet as Dylan from the A Complete Unknown set. The first batch of images and video look like they’re mostly from night shoots.
Then we’ve got some action from a daytime park setting:
Couldn’t tell you with 100% certainty where this is, but if I had to guess, it looks a lot like Washington Square Park. That’d check out with the time period and area of New York City this movie is meant to explore. A Complete Unknown is set in the early 1960s, when Dylan first gets to New York and explodes onto the folk music revival scene around the neighborhood of Greenwich Village. That same general period was the setting for the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, based on the memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk. Excellent read, by the way.
We’ll actually get to see Dylan transition from folk music to the electric guitar in A Complete Unknown, which should make for some compelling drama to say the least.
The fact that Dylan himself gave notes and annotated the script that Mangold carries with him alone suggests that this could be a very special movie. Never mind that Chalamet is in the lead role and looks like he’s going to kill it. What’s more, Chalamet sought out the advice of his Dune: Part Two costar Austin Butler, who won a Golden Globe for Elvis as, you know, Elvis Presley. He’ll be working with Butler’s team — namely the vocal, dialect and movement coach he had on Elvis to bring Dylan to the silver screen.
In honor of the movie’s title, why not play you out with the song it’s lifted from?
