A Complete Unknown vs Better Man - Which Is Better?
Biopic Battle
How do you present a musical life on film? A Complete Unknown follows the formula, taking a regular approach to the career of a notably irregular artist. Better Man swings for the fences, throwing a CGI Monkey Robbie Williams into a full musical fantasy. One is gathering Oscar Buzz, one is bombing at the box office, one has a struggling musician find his voice in a period of great social tumult, one has a monkey getting a handjob.
But which is better?
The Music
I hope I’m not ruffling any feathers here… but I think Bob Dylan is a better songwriter than Robbie Williams.
In many ways, the songs are the true star of A Complete Unknown. Director James Mangold, who previously cemented the musical biopic formula with Walk the Line, really lets the music speak for itself. A good 40% of the film consists of someone singing a classic song, while the camera slowly zooms in on a quietly amazed audience. Chalamet and co. are fully up to the task vocally, and there is certainly a magic to watching a masterpiece form in real time. However, the sequences can get a little repetitive: someone starts singing, push in, reaction shot, “hey, this guy’s good”, back to singer, Ed Norton nodding, singer, Dan Fogler chewing a cigar, back to singer, brief pause, rapturous applause. Rinse, repeat.
As more of a fantasy, Better Man’s songs come alive through beautifully realized musical sequences. Williams’ songs, often as lyrically obvious as they are infuriatingly catchy, lend themselves perfectly to a musical context. Director Michael Gracey brings the experience of his previous film, The Greatest Showman, to the fore, resulting in some spectacular crowd-pleasing moment. There’s a reason that the “Rock DJ” sequence keeps going viral on twitter, look at it! That’s “da magic of da movies” right there. Points to the Monkey.
The Supporting Cast
Better Man truly is The Robbie Williams Show. The film is so laser-focused on unpacking Robbie’s psyche that most other characters in the film come of as little more than caricatures. Steve Pemberton is noteworthy as Robbie’s father, and Raechelle Banno shines (literally) in her initial meet-cute with our monkey boy, but other than that, the movie really interested in anyone else.
A Complete Unknown is as much about the people Bob Dylan and his music affected as it is about Dylan himself. Monica Barbaro and Elle Fanning both make an impact as women left behind in Bob’s wake, but the real standouts are Boyd Holbrook and Ed Norton. Holbrook (a frequent Mangold collaborator) steals scene after scene as Johnny Cash. Effortlessly cool, charming and swashbuckling, Mangold clearly hasn’t forgotten how much he loves this guy. Norton’s Pete Seeger is excellent, a more honest and vulnerable performance than we normally get from the actor. The relationship between Dylan and Seeger is the best in either film, as pure-hearted Pete tries to steer the renegade Dylan down the “right path”, losing his protegee’s trust along the way. Bobby wins this one.
The Leading Man
It’s very tough fight to play a famous figure, especially one with a distinctive speaking voice, without coming across as more of an impression that a performance. Chalamet fights that battle manfully as Dylan, his slumped shoulders and nasally vocal affection effectively evoking the superstar, while still giving room for the actor to put his own spin on the material. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say the same for the script.
A Complete Unknown’s single biggest problem is that it doesn’t have any idea who Bob Dylan is. The script certainly tells us a lot of things that happened to Bob Dylan, but never really shows us anything about what makes him tick. Zimmerman’s mysterious persona is so hard to define that Todd Haynes’ own Dylan film, I’m Not There, took a more artistically challenging route, casting 6 different actors (Cate Blanchett the best of them) to evoke different ideas of Dylan, trying to unravel the mystery at the core of the man. A Complete Unknown, by contrast, doesn’t even really try. Is Bob motivated by justice? Fame? Ambition? Women? Rebellion? Who knows. The film only ever really hints at answering these questions.
Maybe that’s by design, A Complete Unknown is just a chapter of Dylan’s life, Better Man is Robbie Williams’ whole story. Much broader in scale and scope, the question of “what makes this guy tick?” is far more central to the whole affair. For a biopic heavily co-authored by its subject, it’s shockingly damning. According to Better Man, Robbie Williams never had any ambition to make great art, he has always been consumed by a narcissistic hunger for fame and attention, hoping to grow too big for his absent father to ignore.
After years of biopics that heavily sanitize the sins of their subjects (hello, Queen), it’s refreshing to see a presentation this honest, and that has a lot to do with the monkey of it all. The CGI-ape portrayed through motion-capture by Jono Davies and voiced by Davies and Williams himself, is a gimmick that works on every level. The effects are flawless, Davies brings a great physicality to the role and the vocals by Williams help sell the sense that this is the real story. You get used to the monkey quickly, but the effect is profound. There’s always this sense in the back of your mind that this guy is not normal. That sense really helps sell the audience on Robbie’s imposter syndrome, and paradoxically, really humanizes his struggles.
It also helps that Robbie has struggles. The central conflict of A Complete Unknown is never really enough to hang a whole movie on. The movie makes sure that we don’t know Bob well enough to be concerned about his personal life, and we know too much about his career to be concerned about his professional life. Dylan’s transition away from folk music is an important time, but the efforts to exaggerate the peril of the period come off as pretty aggrandizing.
Robbie Williams may be made in a computer, but Chalamet is playing the cartoon here. There’s so little interiority to the character that it’s very hard to get invested. Maybe Dylan is so mysterious that any film trying to understand him would have fallen short, but it would have been nice to see them try. To me, that is the main reason A Complete Unknown falls short; it never makes the unknown, known.
Better Man is not an amazing movie. It’s gonzo visual presentation distracts from the fact that it still follows a very familiar biopic formula. But that presentation though.
The Best Moments in A Complete Unknown and Better Man, in no particular order
Joan Baez (Barbaro) sings House of the Rising Sun and everyone rightly goes nuts
Noel Gallagher cameo where he tells Robbie to fuck off
Better Man was filmed in Melbourne so there’s a Michelle Brasier cameo and I’m 90% sure the conductor in the final concert is the G.O.A.T. himself, John Foreman
Ed Norton’s hairline has to be seen to be believed
Look, I don’t need gratuitous “bender” montages, but it is funny that A Complete Unknown makes is look like Bob Dylan never did any drugs
The monkey movie should have ended with an appearance by Gary Barlow’s massive son, played by a CGI baby elephant
Rock DJ
Like A Rolling Stone
Muddy Waters’ son shows up to play an alcoholic blues musician on Seeger’s tv show, great scene
Monke get handjob
Great read! Good call on Muddy Waters' son - that was tremendous