BWare

I was listening to a podcast review of one of my airplane movies (now purchased and rewatched [0]), A Complete Unknown. The reviewers’ comment was that they got tired of the music biopic trope of others looking at the rising star with adoring eyes, and it’s true, ACU does that a lot.

I noticed it too – it’s really obvious. It could be them fully leaning into the trope, because tropes are tropes because they work, but I think it’s meant to be a subversion of the trope.

Watch Timothee Chalamet in those scenes, and Dylan in Don’t Look Back, and see how that adoration reflects in his/their face, and consider what it must have been like for Dylan then, and for Chalamet in real life now, with the fame [1] descending upon someone self-aware and bright who can see what’s coming, and what that might do, given their naturally cynical bent. Then think about the other movie Chalamet has starred in, and his role in that, and a scene explicitly calling out [2] the moment a friend becomes a disciple.

There, I made a connection between Dune and Bob Dylan. Both of whom arrived at roughly the same time.

It’s definitely a trope, probably for a reason, and well mocked in the music mockumentary genre. I think the director and the star both knew that, and considered the well-deserved skewering these kind of movies have gotten, but this isn’t La Bamba, and it’s not about the adoration, it’s about watching Dylan/Chalamet and seeing that funhouse mirror reflection of what just happened, and what’s about to happen, in their faces, and how it got to Johnny Cash just a moment before.

I don’t think I’ve seen that in a movie before, and that was really well done.

 
 
[0] I wish I had made time to watch it in an IMAX theatre. It was pretty good on my home setup, way better with good sound than on the airplane.
[1] it’s even called out in the letters to Johnny Cash in the movie, how obvious do they have to make it?
[1] in the movie and the book