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Don’t look back: after decades of apathy, A Complete Unknown has turned me into a Dylan nut | Laura Snapes

I went into the cinema without expectation, I left feeling like a besotted teenager and have listened to little other music since

Once, when doing some freelance shifts at Uncut magazine – like Mojo, a publication essentially built in Dylan’s image – I wrote up news on the latest edition of The Basement Tapes and asked whether anyone would truly be excited about these studio dregs. It feels silly, almost girlishly juvenile, that a major Hollywood movie starring a well-studied heartthrob has done for a woman of 36 what the Dylan industrial complex – the magazines, books, reissues and Nobel and Pulitzer prizes – did not (though the many memes suggest I am not alone). A Complete Unknown may play hard and fast with accuracy, but director James Mangold and leading man Timothée Chalamet comprehensively assert the magic of the young Dylan, as perhaps best summarised in this piercingly accurate review on Letterboxd:

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