Year-End Extra: Two Films, One Masterpiece

Timothée Chalamet on the set of A Complete Unknown 
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin, Getty

Last weekend, I watched two of the most buzzed-about films of the season: the risqué Nicole Kidman vehicle Babygirl and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. My estimation of Kidman plummeted, but my appreciation of Dylan—his times, his music, and the astonishing actors who portrayed him and those in his coterie—grew exponentially.

Babygirl may still win Kidman an Oscar for her supposed bravery, just as it garnered awards at the Venice Film Festival and a Golden Globes nod. I am just not buying any of it. Talk about your empress's new clothes.

We saw the film at Cleveland Heights' Cedar Lee, the grubby old theatre where Joe and I had our second date eons ago. We arrived early and saw a progression of seemingly dirty old men situating themselves in the seats around us.

The film commences with the sounds of Kidman’s character in the throes of ecstasy and goes on to portray her as seeking to be dominated in an affair with an intern decades her junior.

But for all the drivel about power dynamics, Babygirl was neither titillating nor incisive. As her twenty-something lover got her to lap up milk like a cat out of a saucer on the floor, Joe had to wake me up from a snoring slumber three times. He was displeased that I made him see the film, and I had no defense.

Moving on.

Bob Dylan’s discography has mostly been a gap in my musical education. I am cursorily familiar with the greatest hits but have no seasoned appreciation for critically acclaimed albums like Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde.

I owed it to myself to check out A Complete Unknown because it portrayed a time and a place—the early '60s, Greenwich Village—that spoke to me. In those days, the Village had artistic integrity, not a Marc Jacobs boutique on every block.

I warned my brother-in-law Mike that I often fall asleep during movies, and he was cool with that. But instead of making me drowsy, as Babygirl had, A Complete Unknown kept me riveted and immersed in a world where folk music reflected social mores and artists sought to change society.

Based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric by music journalist Elijah Wald, the film’s narrative arc takes us from Greenwich Village to Newport, Rhode Island, where, at its 1965 Folk Festival, Dylan plugged in his guitar and thus turned off, baffled, and outraged most of his fans.

Art is made from this seemingly simple premise, and a masterful story is told. 

Previously, I wasn’t sure about Timothée Chalamet—wondering if he was all that good or simply fortunate to be Hollywood’s It boy. I nicknamed him Timothée Chala-meh. Joe cannot get past the fact that he dates a Jenner. 

But as an actor, he is staggeringly great, and this performance—its effortless musicality and brio—is worthy of the Oscar and my endless admiration. The actors portraying Bob Dylan’s contemporaries, from Joan Baez (Monica Barbero) to Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) to Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), were no less mesmerizing.

Dylan did what artists do. If that meant seeming to betray his fans to forge a new path, he had the courage of his musical convictions. History has proven his decision not only correct but, well, electric. I wish I could say the same about Kidman and her choices.

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