2025 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - A Complete Unknown

    For me, the only disappointing thing about this movie was that it opened after Bob Dylan left Minnesota. It would have been awesome if we saw some of his life in Duluth or Minneapolis. But it's not about a local boy who makes it big, it's about how the only songwriter to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature (which he didn't attend) gets his big break and stretches his wings.

    I tend to enjoy movies about famous musicians - I loved Walk the Line, Elvis, and La Bamba - but this movie seemed tailor-made for my husband and me. Chris and I both grew up listening to our mothers' music, and in fact, I've been to a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert with my husband, mom, and mom-in-law at Jesse Auditorium at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Mom and I have been to see Joan Baez at The Blue Note (also in Columbia).  Chris and I both connected instantly with the characters, perhaps because we know and love their music.    My daughter, on the other hand, didn't care about the people, rightly labeled Dylan a jerk, and was appalled by Dylan's singing (also fair - I've always preferred Dylan's songs when they are sung by other people).

    So I don't know if I'm seeing the movie with clear eyes or not, but I loved A Complete Unknown. I loved seeing how that boy from Minnesota lost his innocence, developed as an artist, and went his own way.   I loved seeing how the political crises that happened before I was born (but I grew up hearing about so they feel contemporary) shaped him. I loved his relationships with Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo (called Sylvie Russo in the movie).

    The casting and acting were brilliant, and all the actors did their own singing.  Timothée Chalamet looks just enough like the real Bob Dylan, and is a good enough actor that I was never pulled out of the world of the movie.  Ed Norton was excellent as Pete Seeger, and I'm astounded that the same man played both the vicious Derek Vineyard (the neo-Nazi from American History X) and the gentle Seeger with equal believability. Elle Fanning captured just how difficult it would be to be a famous artist's lover, for it seems to be a truism that great artists are great because they are willing to be self-centered and neglect the people who love them.  And Monica Barbaro captured my beloved Joan very well, singing in a clear soprano voice (with perhaps less vibrato than the real Joan uses), and she delivers my favorite line of the movie with a perfect blend of I-just-figured-this-out and blunt matter-of-factness:

Bob: Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist's office.
Joan: You know, you're kind of an asshole, Bob.
Bob: Yeah, I guess.

(Pithy Reviews; and Ranking out of 10 nominees):

• A Complete Unknown (Super songwriter's origin story; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
• Conclave (Absorbing conspiracy at the Vatican; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
• Emilia Pérez (Stereotypes, redemption, and transition; Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
• Dune: Part Two (Best rendition of a classic SF novel: Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
• The Substance  (Excellent horror movie ruined by ending; Cathy: 5, Chris: 5)
• The Brutalist (Troubled architect explores the pitfalls of patronage; Cathy: 6, Chris: 6)
• Wicked (Beautiful, yet boring; Cathy: 7, Chris: 7)
• Anora (Steaming pile of говно; Cathy: 9, Chris: 8)
• Nickel Boys  (Civil rights meets a feverish collage of an arthouse film; Cathy: 8, Chris: 9)

Unranked/yet-to-be-seen:

• Unwatched - I'm Still Here/Ainda Estou Aqui (A Brazilian politician's wife makes a new life after her husband is disappeared in 1971)