Isle McElroy at The Believer:
Building a film around a temperamental genius is never as simple as placing a star at its center. Murphy and Chalamet both do their parts: they create, they scowl, they have affairs. They are misunderstood. But their perceived genius is less about their particular actions than it is about the reactions of secondary characters. This is apparent throughout A Complete Unknown. In her review of the film, Vulture’s Alison Willmore highlights the cast around Chalamet: “Its best sequences aren’t about Dylan so much as they are about what it was like to be in his orbit when it felt like he could remake the universe.” The film succeeds because it captures how Dylan’s peers saw him—what made them want to be near him, what made them want to support his career.
This is recognizable in Edward Norton’s portrayal of the avuncular folk hero Pete Seeger. The two first interact in Woody Guthrie’s hospital room, when Dylan arrives late one evening to play a song he wrote for his ailing idol. As Dylan performs, the camera lingers on Seeger, his face quickly escalating past intrigue into admiration.
more here.
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