January 9, 2025
Compare the "It Ain't Me Babe" Scene from A Complete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Performance at the Newport Folk Festival

A Com­plete Unknown, the brand new film about Bob Dylan’s upward thrust within the folk-music scene of the ear­ly 9­teen-six­ties and sub­se­quent elec­tri­fied ruin with it, has been praised for now not tak­ing exces­sive lib­er­ties, a minimum of by means of the stan­dards of dad­u­lar track biopics. Its con­ver­sion of an actual chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry has entailed var­i­ous con­fla­tions, com­pres­sions, and rearrange­ments, however you’d be expecting that from a Hol­ly­wooden direc­tor like James Guy­gold. What many view­ers’ judg­ment will come all the way down to is much less his­tor­i­cal verac­i­ty than whether or not they consider Tim­o­th­ée Cha­los angeles­met because the younger Bob Dylan — or slightly, because the younger Bob Dylan they’ve at all times imag­ined.

Nonetheless, a lot is dependent upon the remainder of the forged, who por­tray a bunch of primary folk- and folk-adja­cent fig­ures includ­ing Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, John­big apple Money, Alan Lomax, and the past due Peter Yarrow. No in keeping with­for­mance except for Cha­los angeles­met’s has won as a lot atten­tion as Mon­i­ca Bar­baro’s Joan Baez. In the ones char­ac­ters’ key scene togeth­er they take the degree on the 1964 New­port Folks Fes­ti­val and sing “It Ain’t Me Babe,” a Dylan tune that Baez additionally document­ed. Their ren­di­tion con­veys the intensity in their roman­tic and artis­tic con­nec­tion now not simply to the audi­ence, but in addition to Dylan’s woman­buddy, performed by means of Elle Fan­ning, watch­ing simply off­degree.


“That concept of the name of the game is actual­ly what I would like­ed to dri­ve the scene,” says Guy­gold, the use of the lan­guage of his industry, in the Vari­ety video on the most sensible of the submit. “Ulti­mate­ly, I’ve were given to get it to the place Elle is dri­ven away by means of what­ev­er she’s noticed on degree. However it might­n’t have labored as neatly if Cha­los angeles­met and Bar­baro had­n’t nailed the in keeping with­for­mance, simply one of the within the movie shot 100 in keeping with­cent reside. In case you’d love to com­pare them to the true factor, take a look on the pictures of Dylan and Baez making a song “It Ain’t Me Babe” on the actu­al 1964 New­port Folks Fes­ti­val simply above. After that, it’s possible you’ll wish to return to the pre­vi­ous yr’s fes­ti­val and watch their in keeping with­for­mance of “With God on Our Facet” — and, when you’re at it, lis­ten to Dylan’s complete cat­a­log far and wide once more.

Relat­ed con­tent

Joan Baez Reside in 1965: Complete Con­cert

Bob Dylan’s His­toric New­port Folks Fes­ti­val Consistent with­for­mances, 1963–1965

Watch Joan Baez Endear­ing­ly Imi­tate Bob Dylan (1972)

The Second When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: Watch Him Play “Maggie’s Farm” on the New­port Folks Fes­ti­val in 1965

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Flow 763 Tracks

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and extensive­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the ebook The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him at the social web­paintings for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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