After Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown, the perfect final film to close out James Mangold’s trilogy of musician biopics seems obvious. A Complete Unknown is a spot-on snapsH๏τ of the great Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet. Mangold used the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald to capture a specific chapter of Dylan’s storied career. It starts out in 1961 with Dylan’s early days as a trailblazer on the folk music scene and follows him to 1965, when he defied the stuffy, out-of-touch old guard to introduce an electric guitar into his folk compositions.
A Complete Unknown is a refreshing antidote to formulaic biopics like Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody. Rather than sensationalizing its subject, A Complete Unknown offers a sobering character study. It doesn’t try to capture Dylan’s entire life story; instead, it captures his aura and his profound impact on the people around him as it spends extensive sequences simply hanging out with Dylan and his peers. With its music performed in-camera, it feels more like a concert film than a traditional biopic. The ending of A Complete Unknown sets up the perfect music biopic for Mangold to tackle next.
A Complete Unknown Is The Second Film In A Secret James Mangold Musician Biopic Franchise
Mangold Directed Both Walk The Line & A Complete Unknown
While it’s technically a standalone work, A Complete Unknown is secretly the second installment in a series of music biopics. Before creating a cinematic portrait of Dylan, Mangold told the life story of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. There’s a more direct connection between the two biopics, too, since they overlap. Cash appears in a major role in A Complete Unknown, acting as Dylan’s friend, mentor, and pen pal. Cash pᴀssed the torch to Dylan in A Complete Unknown; now, Dylan needs to pᴀss the torch to someone else to complete the trilogy.
A director’s work is often connected through similar themes and subject matter, so unofficial trilogies are a strangely common phenomenon. Wong Kar-wai directed a trilogy about love, Park Chan-wook directed a trilogy about vengeance, and Oliver Stone directed a trilogy about the Vietnam War. Mangold is well on the way to helming a great trilogy of music biopics. After Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown, he just needs to direct one more to complete the trilogy. The perfect third biopic for Mangold to tackle seems obvious after A Complete Unknown.
A Joan Baez Biopic Would Be Great After A Complete Unknown
Monica Barbaro Gave A Scene-Stealing Turn Opposite Chalamet’s Dylan
There are a lot of real-life figures who appear in A Complete Unknown, but one of the standouts is Monica Barbaro’s portrayal of Joan Baez. Barbaro gives a scene-stealing turn opposite Chalamet’s Dylan, and Baez has her own fascinating history of creating widely influential folk music, so she seems like the perfect candidate to get the biopic treatment next. Given Baez’s complicated relationship with Dylan, a Baez biopic would be a natural way to extend Mangold’s effort to bring the musical greats to the silver screen.
Joan Baez has been performing in public for over 60 years, and has released more than 30 albums.
Dylan and Baez broke into the folk scene around the same time, and they were both hailed as two of the greatest artists ever to grace the genre. As shown in A Complete Unknown, they had a fraught on-and-off romance and a long-standing collaboration, which included touring together. In the same way that Cash handed the baton to Dylan in Mangold’s follow-up to Walk the Line, Dylan could hand the baton to Baez in his follow-up to A Complete Unknown.
James Mangold Doing A Joan Baez Biopic Would Be Very Different From A Complete Unknown & Walk The Line
Baez Led A Very Different Life Than Dylan & Cash
If Mangold did give Baez her own biopic, it would be very different from Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown. Cash and Dylan’s stories were very similar — they were trailblazing icons at the top of their field, they grew frustrated and disillusioned with their own fame, and they had very tumultuous relationships with the women they loved — but Baez has led a very different life than Cash and Dylan. Her biopic would be a very different kind of movie and tell a very different kind of story.
Baez isn’t just a groundbreaking musician; she has also spend her life fighting for social and political causes, like non-violence, civil rights, human rights, and environmental concerns. She was the second of three sisters, all of whom were also musicians and political activists. She refused to play at segregated venues and, due to her father’s work with UNESCO, her family lived all over the world; she lived in England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and the Middle East. Baez’s biopic would be a radically different movie than A Complete Unknown.
