Adapted Screenplay Nominee: A Complete Unknown

I wrote a blog on this film earlier this year, but this post will focus on the screenplay. As everyone knows, A Complete Unknown is a biopic about Bob Dylan’s early career, how he dealt with rising fame, his tumultuous relationships with Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo, and his struggle to define himself as more than a folk singer. Discussing this film in my podcast, I described it as broad but shallow. Screenwriters James Mangold and Jay Crocks adapted Elijah Wald’s book. Dylan Goes Electric somewhat effectively in getting as much material as they could into the film but they were unable to explore anything much beyond the surface level.

Screenplays for biopics are very difficult to tackle. Screenplays are expected to adhere to specific structural components to create stories with rising levels of drama and significant conflict and tension. The problem is that the real lives of people rarely fit neatly into a 3-act structure, necessitating creative license to be taken. A delicate balance often needs to be taken. Add too much creative license and the screenplay will be unrealistic and will alienate fans of the original artist or those who know a lot about him or her. Stay too realistic, and you risk writing a script that lacks drama with potentially wonky pacing and story structure.

Mangold and Crocks chose to sacrifice depth to cast a wide net.

Writing a screenplay is always about the choices you make. Those choices determine what the director has to work with and what kind of film will ultimately be produced. I am not saying this to be critical in any way of the choices that Mangold, who is also the film’s director, and Crocks made. They went with a broad story covering as much material as possible to make the best story and draw the largest audience. They were rewarded with one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, a Best Picture Nomination, a Best Adapted Screenplay Nomination, and eight Academy Award Nominations in total.

However, a case could be made that more depth would have made a better film.

A Complete Unknown is a good film and there were great moments. The moments that were great showed Dylan's bucking tradition. The most dramatic moments showed him struggling with his relationships with Baez and Russo. They showed him as an intensely introverted person struggling to deal with his meteoric rise to become one of the most popular musicians at a time when musicians were most popular. The problem is we didn’t care about any of it.

I always tell writers that the plot is what happens, and the story is why we care. The writers did a good job of cramming a real-life story into a balanced story that had a complete 3-act structure, but they didn’t do enough to get us into the weeds.

I wanted to see more of the turmoil brought on by his simultaneous love interests. I wanted to see why it was important to him to go electric. He makes the point that he doesn’t want to be put in a box and that he wants to explore different genres. In fact, the last third of the movie does delve into this idea and it creates a dramatic ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t reach its full potential because Mangold and Crocks hadn’t laid enough groundwork to engage the audience sufficiently.

One thing the writers did that worked well from a structural standpoint. I often espouse the fact that screenplays are really written in four acts rather than three acts. I have blogged about it in the past and taught seminars on it as well. The screenplay for A Complete Unknown was written in four acts, and each act primarily follows a different trope. Act I shows Dylan in his Ordinary World as a humble folk musician slowly gaining popularity. Act II shows him struggling with his relationships with Baez and Russo. Act III shows him dealing with fame and struggling to reconcile with it. Act IV shows him wanting to move beyond folk music and become a more well-rounded performer.

The problem I have with this structure is there was no real conflict until the fourth act. There was a lot of great music, and the character development between Dylan and his love interests and between Dylan and his allies and eventual enemies was nice. But the lack of conflict resulted in lack of drama. There should have at least been conflict between Dylan and Baez and between Dylan and Russo. There was a small amount, but not enough to make that portion of the script as dramatic as it should have been.

There is a moment in Act IV when Dylan convinces Russo to go with him to the Newport Folk Festival, where he’s planning on performing an electric set because he needs her support. It should have been an incredibly dramatic moment, but it fell flat because we didn’t get into their relationship enough. There were no stakes for the characters or for the audience. Someone unfamiliar with Dylan’s life should have had a rooting interest in whether he ended up with Baez or with Russo. That would have created conflict between the women, and it would have created drama in the story. Because that drama wasn’t created and built on, there was no emotional reaction to Dylan asking Russo to go to the festival with him, and that should have been the most emotional moment of the script.

In a weird way, one of the overall film’s greatest strengths turned into one of the screenplay’s biggest weaknesses. There are a lot of songs in this film. The movie is almost like a glorified Bob Dylan concert movie. Not only are there a lot of songs, but Mangold sticks with most of the songs in their entirety. Until the fourth act, most of the story in the script feels like it’s there to get us from one song to another. The number of songs is great for showing how prolific Dylan was as a songwriter, and it makes for an entertaining film if you like Dylan’s music, which I do, but it doesn’t do much for the story. In my opinion, this is where Mangold and Crocks did not succeed as screenwriters. They needed to find a better balance between the songs and the story. There was a bit of instant gratification in hearing all those songs, but it led to an empty feeling leaving the theater.

The songs were like drinking a soda that tastes good but does little to quench your thirst. They were entertaining in that moment, but ironically didn’t do enough to tell the story of Dylan’s life. This is ironic because so many of Dylan’s songs told compelling stories, and the film that told the story of his life was not compelling enough.

The screenplay for A Complete Unknown is very good. It is also flawed and should not be named this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay.

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