Review: A Complete Unknown (2024)
Somewhere near the middle of Like A Complete Unknown, folk icon Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro), says to Timothèe Chalamet's Bob Dylan: "You're kind of an a**hole, Bob." After a pause, Dylan replies "Yeah...I guess so." This was a crucial moment for me, a cinephile who has grown weary of the way Hollywood tells stories about real people. The last decade of biopics has often seen its subjects presented not merely as talented people, but as superheroes who are not unlike Greek Gods: legendary in status, perched atop a pantheon that lies far outside of human reach. In these films, they're not like us. They never were. They were always "other," bred of stardust and mercury. Through twists of fate that sometimes seem cosmic in scope, the modern biopic no longer presents slightly-exaggerated history, packaged for easy consumption; it now turns human stories into manufactured myth of Shakespearean proportions. That's what makes the Baez lin...
