Best Pictures #126: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Sentimental Value

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #126: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Sentimental Value

"But what the house disliked more than noise was silence."

Sentimental Value has all of the ingredients and even the perfect title for an overwrought family melodrama. It certainly is a family drama. The premise is tailor made to incite conflict: Two daughters reconnect with their estranged filmmaker father when he wants one them, an actress, to star in his comeback project, which is about the suicide of his mother and he wants to film it in their family home. This could have been a soap opera, and probably a very interesting one, but in the hands of Norwegian director Joaquim Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt (the team behind the acclaimed and very entertaining The Worst Person in the World, and Reprise, one of my favorite movies of the aughts) Sentimental Value is a substantial work.

The estranged filmmaker father is Gustav, played by the incredible Stellan Skarsgård, who is out of touch with his adult daughters, Nora (Renata Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), on just about every level. He thinks that the role in his new movie could be Nora’s breakthrough, never mind that she is already a successful theater actress. His conversations with Agnes, who acted in his films as a child, are more cordial but she holds her own resentments in her own ways. A line is crossed when he wants Agnes’s young son to be in the new movie. He’s also out of touch with the new landscape of moviemaking. When asked if his new movie, a Netflix production, will play in theaters, he responds, “Where else?” 

At a film festival he’s approached by Rachel (Elle Fanning), an American movie star who is looking to challenge herself as an actress. Fanning, in one of her best performances, is great at playing an actress who is good, and earnestly wants to be better, but is not right for the role. 

If this movie feels unfocused or episodic that's only because no person's life is only about one thing. Trier and Vogt's Oscar nominated original screenplay aims to capture that. Certain sequences feel like they could be self-contained short films. My favorite of these is Gustav and Rachel on the beach at a film festival. An early scene of Nora having breakdown moments before she has to go on stage is another great self contained sequence. 

Sentimental Value is not afraid of being upfront with its themes and symbolism. A prologue tells us about Nora's 6th grade essay that imagined what the old family house saw and felt. A narrator tells us about a crack running through the house, splitting it. In a surreal moment, reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the faces of Gustav, Nora, and Agnes all blur together. More than one scene of Nora expressing anguish or sadness turns out to be her acting. 

When the confrontations come, they are not big or loud. There are great performances from the whole cast but no one showboats. It’s no surprise that all of the principal performers have received Oscar nominations: Renate Reinsve for Actress; Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Supporting Actress; Stellan Skarsgård for Supporting Actor, somehow the first Oscar nomination of his impressive and eclectic career. No matter the combination of characters in a scene, their interactions are unmannered enough to feel realistic and that's what makes them so interesting to watch. These characters are allowed layers and complexities and contradictions. 

This certainly has all the markings of an Oscar bait movie. It received a total 9 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best International Picture, so I suppose it is. Yet, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Sentimental Value is also the kind of movie that Hollywood used to make on a semiregular basis and rarely makes now. I don’t care if it comes from Norway or has subtitles; I’m just glad movies like this are still being made somewhere and that people, the Academy included, are taking notice. 

Sentimental Value is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video.

Nominees: Maria Ekerhovd, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar, producers

Director: Joachim Trier

Screenplay: Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning

Production Companies: Mer Film, Eye Eye Pictures, MK Productions, et al. 

Distributor: Neon, Mubi

Release Date: December 26th, 2025

Total Nominations: 9, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: International Feature Film; Actress-Renate Reinsve; Director-Joachim Trier; Supporting Actor-Stellan Skarsgård; Supporting Actress-Elle Fanning; Supporting Actress-Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas; Original Screenplay-Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt; Editing-Olivier Bugge Coutté 

Best Pictures #125: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Train Dreams

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #125: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Train Dreams

“The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.”

I suppose you could describe Train Dreams as an arthouse film, though that is a loaded term; even my guard goes up when I hear about an arthouse movie. Train Dreams is not conventional; it is not mainstream. There are none of the typical beats that fill an average American movie. Such moments and tropes would ruin a gentle and sensitive movie like this. Sometimes a critic will call a movie they love a gem. Well, this movie is a gem; something to be treasured and appreciated and shared. Each time you look at it from just a slightly different perspective, it reveals something new and wonderful and enchanting. 

The plot, to the extent that there is a plot, is extremely simple. Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a logger living in the Pacific Northwest during the early decades of the 20th century. That's it. He is a quiet and shy person but on a rare trip to church he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones). Actually she introduces herself to him. Robert does not seem like the type to do such a thing himself. They are a wonderful match and have a daughter, but Robert spends much of his time away on logging jobs. He and Gladys plan to save money to turn their land into a farm, but things do not go as planned.

Joel Edgerton is great as the lowkey Robert. His face shows us that he is a simple man who still has deep thoughts and emotions going on beneath the surface. Robert knows that there is more meaning to life and existence and nature. He also knows that he doesn't know how to make sense of the larger meaning behind everything or how to even start contemplating it. 

Robert is haunted by his inadvertent participation in the murder of a Chinese railroad worker; he asks what the man did and is never given an answer. He asks a fellow logger, the aged Arn Peoples (William H. Macy), whose folksy wisdom likely comes from a lifetime of experiences he probably would rather not have had, if a person can be followed by the bad things he does in his life. Arn says that he's seen bad people be lifted up and good people be brought down but if he had the answer he would be sleeping next to someone better looking than Robert.

William H. Macy is a nice, lively addition as the folksy would-be philosopher Arn. His thoughts, which he is very ready to share, are not esoteric or cryptic. Only when asked about his family does he obfuscate and become cagey; that tells us all we need to know. Gladys risks becoming more of a symbol than a character but Felicity Jones gives her warmth and substance, even with relatively little screen time.

Any screenwriting or film professor will tell you not to use narration, that it is a crutch and you must show, not tell. Of course, there are many examples of good narration that adds to a movie without condescending to the audience or taking away from the performances. This is one such example. The narration here is wonderfully spoken by Will Patton, a character actor so prolific that, yes, you have absolutely seen him before. He also read the audiobook of the novella by Denis Johnson so perhaps him being the narrator is no big surprise, yet it in no way diminishes the great effect of his superb skill at bringing words to life (Patton has also read several other audiobooks and his narration makes them worth listening to). The narration along with the masterful Oscar nominated cinematography by Adolpho Veloso and the ethereal but not out of place score by Bryce Dessner give Train Dreams its poetic qualities. 

The influence of the films of Terrence Malick (Badlands and especially Days of Heaven) can be seen and felt in Train Dreams. However, and this may be heresy to some, I feel that director and co-writer Clint Bentley surpasses Malick (at least the recent films) in that Train Dreams is more than a philosophical exploration of existence and meaning. This film ponders these things too of course, but it hits on a subtle but no less affecting emotional and almost spiritual level. Train Dreams might seem like a slight movie since it is about the life of a rather ordinary, obscure man but that does not mean that his life or the film are not something special. Train Dreams is one of the best movies I have seen in quite some time. I can’t wait to see it again. 

Train Dreams is available to stream on Netflix.

Nominees: Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz, Ashley Schlaifer, Michael Heimler, producers

Director: Clint Bentley

Screenplay: Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar; based on the novel by Denis Johnson

Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy

Production Companies: Black Bear, Kamala Films

Distributor: Netflix

Release Date: November 7th, 2025

Total Nominations: 4, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Adapted Screenplay-Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar; Cinematography-Adolpho Veloso; Original Song-"Train Dreams", Music by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner, Lyric by Nick Cave

Best Pictures #123: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Hamnet

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #123: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Hamnet

"These but the trappings and suits of woe."

Hamnet begins with a note explaining that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable. It gives no such note about the names Anne and Agnes, which it seems were interchangeable as well: Anne Hathaway, later Anne Shakespeare, was referred to in her father's will as Agnes; the film refers to her only as Agnes (pronounced Ayn-yes). I suppose it does not matter whether she was Anne or Agnes because we do not really get to know this character or her husband, Will. This is really too bad because the point of the movie is to make the audience share in their grief over their son Hamnet, who died at the age of 10. This film, and the novel it is based on by Maggie O'Farrell, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Chloe Zhao, suggest that out of that grief Shakespeare was inspired to write his most famous play, Hamlet.

Jessie Buckley plays Agnes, whose mother was rumored to be a forest witch (more of a slander than, at the time, a serious legal accusation) and who herself is deeply connected to the natural world. The opening shot of the movie is of her barefoot and asleep nestled in the root of a gargantuan and ancient tree. To give birth to her first child, a girl, Susanna, she hobbles out to the woods alone. She is unable to do so for the birth of the twins, Judith and Hamnet. 

Paul Mescal plays Will, a mediocre glovemaker, part time tutor, and aspiring poet and writer. The movie goes to great pains to avoid the names William and Shakespeare. When we finally do hear the name “William Shakespeare” it is played as though the full identity of Anne/Agnes’s husband is a great revelation or even a twist. This would make sense and be acceptable if Hamnet was really meant to tell the story of an average Renaissance era woman and did not depend, moreover require, you to know, if only vaguely, who Shakespeare was and that his most famous play is Hamlet in order to have any pathos at all. 

It seems that Buckley and Mescal were not meant to play people so much as vessels for grief and woe. Agnes is not presented as especially witchy, but she does have a vision that at her deathbed only two children will be at her side. So, when the newborn girl seems stillborn then finally breathes, Agnes believes that Judith is marked for death. However, we the audience know that Hamnet is the child fated to die (because that is the premise of the movie), so it is only a shock to Agnes, not the audience, and plays like a cruel joke only meant to increase her pain and suffering. It does not enhance the drama of the movie. Jessie Buckley is almost certain to win the Best Actress Oscar, but I never felt that Agnes was a full character, much less a person that really lived. A scene of Will in London consumed by grief as he stands at the edge of the Thames River and speaks the “To be or not to be” soliloquy made my eyes nearly roll out of my head.

The pacing never felt slow and very few scenes felt extraneous, yet afterwards I wondered how this movie took up 2hours and 5 minutes. Until Hamnet’s death from the plague, the movie is scenes of day to day life in a rural Renaissance era English village, specifically around one cottage. The romance between Agnes and Will is sweet and passionate; both feel like outsiders in their families and their community. Agnes encourages Will’s move to London because she believes he is meant for more. However, we do not get any hint of his potential greatness; at least a sonnet would have helped. All we get is a scene of him so frustrated with writer’s block that he wakes their baby. 

The most exciting part of Hamnet is the performance of Hamlet at the Globe theater. This is meant to be the great catharsis of the movie for both Will and Agnes, but it does not work. Agnes behaves as though she is an alien just arrived on earth and has no idea what the hell a play is. She shouts at the actor playing Hamlet. She frantically and confusedly speaks to her brother and the stage itself so loudly that even the groundlings, notorious for their rowdiness, shush her. We know from a scene earlier in the movie, where the children act out what would become the Weird Sisters/Witches opening scene of MacBeth, that Agnes is familiar with the idea of a performance and of people pretending. I applaud Buckley for playing this straight but that is far from the same as saying she should be nominated or win the Best Actress Oscar. 

Hamnet is absolutely not how Shakespeare came up with Hamlet. Of course Shakespeare in Love is absolutely not how he came up with Romeo and Juliet either, but that film behaves as though it knows everything it is showing you is made up. Hamnet takes itself too far too seriously without giving you anything, aside from the premise, to stand on. Shakespeare left no diaries or letters for later generations to know what he thought and how he felt. This is a gift to modern storytellers who want to make Shakespeare into whatever they will. This one falls flat. Every high school student has the same reaction when they find out that Shakespeare’s son was named Hamnet and his most famous play is Hamlet–at least currently, as Shakespeare’s most popular play changes with whatever the era. This story would have you believe that Hamnet's death and the production of Hamlet happened one after the other. In reality four years passed between Hamnet’s death and the first performance of Hamlet. Shakespeare was much more likely cashing in on the trend of “revenge plays” like The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. Shakespeare wrote plays about fathers and sons before Hamlet and did so after. His last sole authored play, The Tempest, is about a father and daughter; Shakespeare’s daughters have little purpose in this movie. A much more moving and affecting version of everything Hamnet is striving for has already been put on screen in Kenneth Branagh's All is True (2018)–a movie I assure you exists–which has all the insight and pathos that Hamnet lacks.

Hamnet is streaming on Peacock.

Nominees: Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, producers

Director: Chloé Zhao

Screenplay: Chloé Zhao & Maggie O'Farrell; based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson

Production Companies: Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions, Amblin Entertainment, Book of Shadows

Distributor: Focus Features

Release Date: November 26th, 2025

Total Nominations: 8, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Jessie Buckley; Director-Chloé Zhao; Adapted Screenplay-Maggie O'Farrell, Chloé Zhao; Production Design-Fiona Crombie (production designer), Alice Felton (set decorator);  Costume Design-Malgosia Turzanska; Original Score-Max Richter; Casting-Nina Gold

Best Pictures #122: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: The Secret Agent

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #122: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Secret Agent

“Our story is set in the Brazil of 1977, a period of great mischief…”

The Secret Agent has intrigue, characters with mysterious backgrounds and multiple identities, characters on the lam, hired assassins, secret meetings, escape plans that need fake passports, corrupt authority figures, and underground networks, but it is not a spy movie. If the titular 'secret agent' is anybody, it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo in the 1973 film Le Magnifique, also titled, The Man From Acapulco, The Magnificent One, and The Magnificent Secret Agent, in which he plays an author who has elaborate and ridiculous fantasies about being a spy. We see a clip of the trailer at the movie theater where one of the characters works. Perhaps it was unintentional but no less fitting that director Kleber Mendonça Filho included a reference to a movie that had different names for different locations. The main character of The Secret Agent also goes by different names in different locations. 

This is an incredibly well crafted film set in 1977 in Brazil during its military dictatorship about how the realities of living under a dictatorship have forced ordinary people to behave and act like they are a secret agent in a spy movie. So, Marcelo (Wagner Moura) does more or less everything you might expect a secret agent to do. We do not learn his backstory for a long time but we never really get the impression that he is a spy or anything close to it. As I mentioned before, there is mystery and intrigue, and even a shoot out, but this is far from an action movie. It is a moving drama that you hope never turns into a thriller because of what it would mean for the characters. 

When Marcelo returns to the city of Recife at the start of Carnivale he is greeted with surprise and even apprehension by nearly everyone he meets, except for his young son Fernando. We come to learn that Marcelo is not his real name, that he is mourning the loss of his wife, wants to leave Brazil with his son, and his only friends and allies are those who are also out of favor with the state. In a moving scene at the apartment of Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), an elderly woman who provides shelter and assistance to those on the run, one after one reveals that they are under a death threat. Marcelo is set up with a job at the identification documents institute where he searches for evidence to prove that his mother existed; we never learn the full story of her disappearance. This could be a whole movie in itself but Marcelo is only there to bide time until he can flee Brazil with his son. 

What really makes The Secret Agent something special is that it is filled with so many characters, who, no matter their screen time, could be the main character of their own movie. There is Marcelo's father-in-law who works at the movie theater and looks after Fernando; There is Elza, a member of the underground resistance who interviews Marcelo and tries to arrange his passport; There is Dona Sebastiana and everyone she gives shelter to. There is the German Hans (Udo Kier in his final performance for one intense and powerful scene) who the obnoxious and corrupt local police chief likes to show off like an oddity because he believes Hans is a former Nazi soldier (Hans is actually a Holocaust survivor).  The police chief and his son and adopted son are the contacts for the pair of hitmen hired to kill Marcelo. The Secret Agent is among the first films to receive an Oscar nomination in the brand new Best Casting Oscar category. This nomination is most well earned and is my pick for what film should win. 

The story is divided into three chapters with an unofficial prologue that is a brilliant short film in itself. Marcelo stops at a gas station where there is a dead body on the ground half covered by a piece of cardboard. Police arrive but they do not care about the body. They inspect Marcello’s car looking for something to charge him with and force a bribe. When they find out Marcello has no cash they settle for his cigarettes and leave. This perfectly sets up the realities of the time and place we are about to see.  

There is also, unexpectedly but calculatedly, a storytelling device that introduces a plotline in the present day. It is jarring at first and each time the film cuts back to this storyline it feels something like a commercial break. However, this plotline does provide the conclusion and catharsis. More importantly, it ties the events of the past to the present. 1977 is nearly 50 years ago which is more than a long time to most people, but by joining the story of Marcelo in the past to the researcher today, the film confronts the audience with the fact that the terrible and oppressive past really was not that long ago. It still affects people today and perhaps resonates so strongly because the corruption and oppression feel unfortunately familiar at present. This happened not that long ago, so why can’t it happen again?

The Secret Agent is available to stream on Disney+/Hulu and to rent on Amazon Prime.

Nominees: Emilie Lesclaux, producer

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho

Cast: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria

Production Companies: CinemaScópio, MK Productions, One Two Films, Lemming Film, Arte France Cinéma

Distributor: Neon

Release Date: December 5th, 2025

Total Nominations: 4, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actor-Wagner Moura; Best International Feature; Casting-Gabriel Domingues

Best Pictures #111: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: I'm Still Here

by A.J.

Best Pictures #111: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee:

I'm Still Here

“Then one day when we went by, [the house] was completely closed and there was police guarding it.” 

Is it wrong to call a movie about something so devastating and tragic wonderful? That is how I felt after watching I'm Still Here, based on the true story of the Paiva family and what they endured under the military dictatorship in 1970’s Brazil. It would be a disservice to use any of the cliched blurbs and one liners that typically get applied to movies based on true stories: triumphant; powerful; a story about the power of the human spirit. All of these things are true but I’m Still Here is so well-made and so deeply affecting that it stands above prepackaged praise or comparison to other movies. I would not have seen it if not for its Best Picture nomination, but I'm very glad I did because this is indeed one of the best pictures of 2024.

The movie begins with a portrait of family life that is simultaneously idyllic–not idealized–and average. They live in a nice house that is walking distance from the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Their house is filled with relatives and friends. One of the 5 Paiva children adopts a stray dog. The teenagers love rock music, especially The Beatles. They like books, make home movies, and take lots of pictures. The parents, Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and Rubens (Selton Mello) are gentle and warm. Also army vehicles drive by in the background of a day at the beach. The grownups talk about the big news story of a kidnapped ambassador. The oldest teenage daughter and her friends are stopped at a checkpoint, their IDs checked, car searched, and eventually sent on their way. Later she goes to school in London and the family gathers around to watch a home movie she sent of an English winter filled with exotic snow–her letter says that it feels weird not to go to the beach at Christmas. It is a wonderful family moment. Then men in regular clothes with guns arrive at the house and say that Ruebens has to come with them. He gets in a car and is never seen again.

Another movie, a lesser movie, would arrive at this moment sooner. After all, every screenwriting class and book says to make the first act as short as possible, 15-20 minutes, 10 if you can. By delaying the inciting incident director Walter Salles and screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega make this movie truly a story about a family–not an event–whose lives are disrupted and forever changed by outside forces in the form of political violence. It was also a wise choice to background the dictatorship and any sense of politics in the extended first act. We get lulled into a false sense of security. I think anyone who watches this movie will secretly hope like I did that we get to just spend the whole movie with the Paivas and whatever they get up to. This only helps to deepen the profound loss and irrevocable change dealt to the family.

In addition to a generous screenplay, the emphasis on characters and family life works so well because of the talent and skill on camera, especially in the incredible and wonderful performance of Fernanda Torres as Eunice. The brilliance of Torres’s performance is in her command of expression. She puts on a brave face for the children while conveying fear and uncertainty to the audience. Eunice endures so much, whether it is her being imprisoned along with her daughter, Eliana, and interrogated and played mind games with—thankfully both are released—or the less direct but no less stinging injustice of not being able to take money out of the bank without her husband, who is not legally dead. The low-key defiance of Eunice, while still ensuring the safety of her children, is unquestionably believable because of Torres.   

A subtle but important part of I'm Still Here is the production design and the costumes and hairstyles. Everything looks like old photographs of the 1970's; that is to say that the characters' clothes and hair, especially on the youths, looks more like the reality of the era. The hip pretty teenagers look like people trying to look like movies and magazines instead of looking like modern people with their hair and makeup done up in a glamorous, retro style. This is true for the adults as well. The same goes for the house and the cars.  Everything looks like it is lived in and used all the time. This goes a long way to setting this true story in a true feeling time and place. Walter Salles's own experiences growing up in Rio as a teenager at this time, especially knowing the Pavia family, no doubt played a major part in capturing the authenticity of this moment in time and these people. In an interview with Variety he recalls, “There was such a vitality to the house. It was a place we all wanted to drift through…Then one day when we went by, it was completely closed and there was police guarding it. You can imagine the shock.”

I'm Still Here is about depressing things but it is not a depressing movie. Receiving a death certificate after decades of legal fights may seem like a morbid triumph, but by this point we know how much it means. Eunice insists that her family smile in photographs, even for a news story about what they have suffered. Those smiles show that they are still a family, still together. Flashforwards deliver a sense of closure and may feel redundant, especially given the epilogue cards, but they are welcome moments. The final scene features an elderly Fernanda Montenegro (Torres’s real life mother who was the first Brazilian actress nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, also for a Walter Salles movie, Central Station (1998); her daughter is the second). It is a small but beautiful moment. This is the kind of movie that seems like homework or eating your vegetables. However, despite its subject matter I'm Still Here is not a chore to get through; ultimately you come away feeling thankful for the experience

Nominees: Maria Carlota Bruno and Rodrigo Teixeira, Producers

Director: Walter Salles Screenplay: Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega; based on I'm Still Here by Marcelo Rubens Paiva

Cast: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro

Production Companies: VideoFilmes, RT Features, MACT Productions, Arte France Cinéma, Conspiração, Globoplay

Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing (Brazil), StudioCanal

Release Date: February 7th, 2025

Total Nominations: 3, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Fernanda Torres; International Picture

Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: A Complete Unknown

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

A Complete Unknown

“Don’t think twice, it’s alright.”

If I wanted to show someone a movie that captured the appeal of the enigmatic and mysterious and prickly person of Bob Dylan, beyond just the songs he wrote and sung, I would show them Todd Hayne’s 2007 non-biopic I’m Not There, in which six different actors played Bob Dylan-like characters in different stories (Cate Blanchett as the sunglasses hipster Dylan who goes electric is the stand out of the film and received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). Director James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, is a very well-made and entertaining, if standard feeling, film about the musician. This is technically a biopic, but it is less a biography than a dramatization of some of the events in Bob Dylan’s career from his beginnings in 1961 through the infamous and consequential Newport Folk Festival in 1965 where Dylan famously, or notoriously, “went electric.” 

Young Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) arrives in New York to meet the legendary Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) at a hospital so empty and bleak it reminded me of the hospital where Michael Corleone had to save his comatose father from hitmen in The Godfather. (Guthrie had Huntington’s Disease but I don’t remember if this is mentioned). Guthrie’s regular visitor Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) is there and offers the young musician a place to stay and introduces him to the burgeoning folk music scene. There is nothing of Bob Dylan before he arrives in New York. This isn’t an attempt to explain or understand Dylan—neither the real Dylan nor fans then or now would want that because the mystique, the poetic enigma, is the appeal of not Bob Dylan, but “Dylan.” They’re right of course. There are no scenes showing how or why he came up with his songs; such scenes would be hacky and feel blatantly false. A true feeling moment happens when Dylan confesses that he hates talking about his music because when people ask “where do your songs come from?” they’re really asking, why didn’t they come to me? An annoying moment comes when Sylvie (Elle Fanning, playing a composite character) finds a scrap of paper with lyrics from The Times They Are A Changin’ and recites them to a bashful Dylan. 

Whether he’s an annoying jerk (if you don’t want to be recognized then maybe comb your distinctive hair differently when you go out?) or a brilliant, innovative musician, Timothee Chalamet gives a great performance. He performed all of the songs live to camera, at the urging of co-star Edward Norton, and does a great job sounding like Bob Dylan, speaking and singing, without approaching parody. More importantly, he is believable as the kind of person who other people project their desires and aspirations onto and made people want to collaborate with him, be his mentor, his friend, his lover, even if he treated them poorly. Chalamet’s Oscar nomination may have been a foregone conclusion before the movie was even released, but it is still deserved. 

As good as Chalamet is, the real standouts are his co-stars, specifically Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, both of whom have also received Oscar nominations in the Supporting categories. Barbaro’s performance is especially noteworthy because this movie is so harsh to her character. In their scenes of conflict, as lovers or collaborators, the movie is firmly on Dylan’s side; after all he is the musical genius and she is just a singer (the movie’s sentiments, not my own). 

Norton’s great success with his portrayal of Pete Seeger, more than performing the music, also live, is in making his unbelievably kind and positive version of Seeger believable. Norton hasn’t played a character this optimistic and positive since Sheldon Mopes in Death to Smoochy, where he played another kind character who believed that music could change the world. 

James Mangold also directed the great Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005), a film so good that it could only be topped by the brilliant music biopic parody to end all music biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, but the problem is that Hollywood kept making music biopics, A Complete Unknown included. As a Johnny Cash fan, the moments that made me perk up were the scenes of Dylan exchanging letters with Cash–I immediately recalled the scene in Walk the Line where Cash can’t remember what he did with the letter to that “young folk singer” because he wrote it on a paper bag because when he was drunk. I nodded approvingly. Much easier to notice is Mangold recycling an entire scene from Walk the Line in which Cash and June Carter play Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe while Cash’s wife Vivian looks on with heartbreak and anger. Here Dylan and Baez sing It Ain’t Me Babe while Elle Fanning’s Sylvie looks on, but emotions just aren’t there. Another element of Walk the Line that Mangold reuses, but to positive effect, is shooting concert scenes from the stage or backstage allowing for the spotlights to create brilliant silhouettes. 

Johnny Cash shows up at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan is about to displease the organizers and most of the audience when he “goes electric” and changes music history. Boyd Holbrook gives a great performance as Cash, playing him somewhere between comic relief and as an alternative mentor–someone who also bounced between genres while maintaining a rebel persona. He holds out his guitar to Dylan and Dylan taking it won me over. So Dylan wins again.

Dylan sours on Seeger and Baez because he has outgrown the whole folk scene, but no explanation or catalyst is given, just a jump in time and change of clothes and hair. The unknowability of “Dylan” becomes like a crutch because any flaw in Dylan’s character or change in behavior can be chalked up to the “unknowable genius” angle. Yes, no one can pin down why a creative person is creative, but at a certain point that becomes a cop out. You can probably guess what the final image of the movie will be; Mangold tries to draw it out and then, yes, it happens, epilogue cards and all.

Nominees: Fred Berger, James Mangold and Alex Heineman, Producers

Director: James Mangold

Screenplay: James Mangold and Jay Cocks; based on Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro

Production Companies: Searchlight Pictures, Veritas Entertainment Group, White Water, Range Media Partners, The Picture Company, Turnpike Films

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: December 25, 2024

Total Nominations: 8 including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-James Mangold; Actor-Timothée Chalamet; Supporting Actor-Edward Norton; Supporting Actress-Monica Barbaro; Adapted Screenplay-James Mangold and Jay Cocks; Sound-Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey and David Giammarco; Costume Design-Arianne Phillips