Warning: This article includes SPOILERS for A Complete Unknown

During the director’s commentary for A Complete Unknown, James Mangold expresses one belief about Bob Dylan that Dylan rejected 54 years ago. Though musicians have come and gone from the pop culture zeitgeist, Bob Dylan has never disappeared from the public consciousness. Widely regarded as one of the best songwriters who ever lived, Dylan has been the subject of many documentaries and films. The 2024 biopic A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan, follows in the footsteps of other biopics, trying to provide insight into Bob Dylan’s life during the 1960s.

A Complete Unknown quickly garnered praise from critics and audiences alike, receiving eight Oscar nominations. After its theatrical exclusivity period, the film was released for rental and purchase, offering extra content with the digital version. I’ve watched the content, and A Complete Unknown’s director’s commentary reveals many fascinating, behind-the-scenes details worth dissecting. However, none is more interesting than James Mangold’s belief about Bob Dylan’s song lyrics.

James Mangold Claims In A Complete Unknown’s Director’s Commentary That Bob Dylan Isn’t An Enigma

A Complete Unknown’s Director Thinks Bob Dylan’s Lyrics Are The Key To Understanding Him

During the director’s commentary for A Complete Unknown, James Mangold acknowledges the perspective that Bob Dylan is an enigma but pushes back against this sentiment. During the scene where Bob Dylan meets Joan Baez and performs onstage, Mangold said that he believes a person will understand who Bob Dylan is if they just put the songs in order, place them in conjunction with moments in his life, and read the lyrics. He said that he discovered this while going through Bob Dylan’s catalogue, preparing for the movie.

This process provided him with insight, though I’d bargain to say that a lot of understanding could’ve come from the director spending hours with the iconic musician. Still, Mangold is far from the first person to have suggested that the musician’s lyrics reveal some kind of truth. Listeners and critics have been picking apart Bob Dylan’s lyrics for the past sixty years, trying to get his mind. Some Dylanologists have even dedicated their entire academic lives to the study of the musician’s songs.

Bob Dylan Criticized People Interpreting His Lyrics As Autobiographical In An Unaired 1971 Interview

Bob Dylan Contradicted The Idea Put Forth By A Complete Unknown’s Director, 54 Years Earlier

Though I can’t say with any certainty whether Bob Dylan would consider himself an enigma, I’m confident in saying he would likely disagree with James Mangold’s sentiment about the lyrics after reading the transcripts for the lost 1971 Bob Dylan interview. In 1971, Dylan did a couple of interviews with his old friend Tony Glover that were never released. However, Glover held onto the trapes and annotated transcripts, which resurfaced in 2020 after his death. During the interview, Glover asked whether Dylan’s songs reflected his perspective, and he vehemently denied it. His annotations say this (via Come Writers and Critics):

“That’s what the song says. That’s what the character in the song feels. Pete Seeger sings a lot of songs, right? And they express lots of different points of view. Do you think Johnny Cash sH๏τ a man in Reno? Or that Paul Simon would throw himself down over a troubled Hudson River and let somebody use him as a bridge?”

Dylan never seemed particularly fond of people viewing his songs as autobiographical – a sentiment he repeated three decades later in his autobiography, Chronicles: Part One, when talking about Blood on the Tracks. Unless he’s changed his perspective, this quotation from the 1971 interview indicates that Bob Dylan would disagree with James Mangold’s ᴀssertion. However, during the lost interview, he does point to Another Side as his most personal album, saying, “that’s only me there.” As such, fans who want more insight into his mind during the 1960s view that as a good touchstone.

Bob Dylan’s Enigmatic Status Is What Makes A Complete Unknown Great

The Mysteriousness of Bob Dylan Brings In Movie Viewers

During the Q&A after an early access showing of A Complete Unknown, for which I was present, James Mangold said that he didn’t want to depict Bob Dylan as an enigma in the film. His statement in the director’s commentary makes it seem like he doesn’t believe that the enigma persona is true to begin with. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for viewers, he didn’t succeed in fully breaking down that image. A few moments in A Complete Unknown provide vulnerability; however, most of it keeps viewers at arm’s length.

Ultimately, the enigmatic status of the musician is actually what makes A Complete Unknown and other Bob Dylan movies great, though. This man managed to revolutionize music and gained the тιтle of “the voice of a generation.” We all want to understand what makes this genius tick, but the brilliance of Bob Dylan is that we can’t. In the end, A Complete Unknown weaves together a compelling story that reveals much about the human condition while reinforcing the inscrutableness of Bob Dylan.

Funnily enough, even if it wasn’t Mangold’s intention, the 2024 biopic proves exactly why we should embrace the enigma that is Bob Dylan. A Complete Unknown shows that Dylan didn’t want to be defined by truth, genres, or personas. It’s time we all stopped fighting that, including James Mangold.