Great Barrington — Going into the new year, one of the most discussed recent movie releases is “A Complete Unknown.” Released on Christmas Day, the film is a fictional account of Bob Dylan’s arrival from Minnesota to the West Village in Manhattan. The movie chronicles Dylan’s rise to stardom and recreates the folk scene of the 1960s along the way.
It ends with the “Dylan Goes Electric” episode at the Newport Folks Festival in July 1965.
At the festival, Dylan went against organizers and their traditional acoustic performances, playing a full set with electric instruments. The performance was, at the time, very controversial because it did not adhere to the acoustic “folk music” standards of the era.
The film stars Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, with Edward Norton playing Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Elle Fanning as the character “Sylvie Russo,” a fictionalized version of Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo.
On Sunday, January 5, at 1:30 p.m., The Triplex will hold a screening of the movie followed by a discussion with music critic Seth Rogovoy, author of “Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet” and the recently released “Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison.”
Rogovoy told The Berkshire Edge that he would not prematurely share his personal opinion on the movie. “I did one of these talkback events about the movie just recently, and I withheld my opinion of the movie and my judgements until the very end,” Rogovoy said. “The way I approach these talkback events is that I want to engage the audience and hear from people. I want to let them have their say without revealing my opinion, and I don’t want to give too much away about the movie.”
When asked about why the “Dylan Goes Electric” incident is still relevant almost 60 years later, Rogovoy explained that Dylan’s performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was a transformational moment for music. “When Dylan first arrived on the scene, he played blues and traditional folk music,” Rogovoy said.
As noted in the movie, Dylan’s 1962 debut album was mostly made up of traditional folk songs, with only two original songs written by Dylan appearing on the album. “Dylan eventually started to write more songs and performed them, creating a great reputation before he went electric,” Rogovoy said. “For the first two years he performed at the Newport Folk Festival, in 1963 and 1964, as the movie shows, he’s performing with an acoustic guitar and singing, plus he has no band behind him. But in 1965, he came with an electric back up band. It was a big deal because people had pigeon-holed him into the folk music tradition. Some people thought his 1965 performance was a betrayal of folk music, but I don’t think it was by any means.”
Rogovoy pointed out that “Like a Rolling Stone,” a song backed by an electric band, was released before that infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival. “It may have been a surprise to some that he performed the song in an electric setting, but it didn’t just come out of nowhere,” Rogovoy said. “Dylan’s very first single back in 1962 was ‘Mixed Up Confusion,’ which was recorded with an electric backup band.”
Rogovoy added that Dylan’s high school yearbook quote said that he wanted to join Little Richard’s band. “He loved rock ‘n’ roll all the way back to the mid-1950s, so these were his roots,” Rogovoy said.
As for the way the movie fictionalized incidents, Rogovoy emphasized that “A Complete Unknown” is not a documentary. “It’s a Hollywood biopic, and it’s supposed to be an entertaining film,” Rogovoy said. “Real life can be very unwieldy and hard to capture. For this film, they only had two hours and 20 minutes, which in itself is very long for a movie. It’s very understandable that the filmmakers would basically invent scenes, and one would hope that they remained true to the essence and spirit of who Bob Dylan was.”
For more information about the January 5 showing of “A Complete Unknown,” visit The Triplex’s website.
