Monica Barbaro On Bringing The Story Of Bob Dylan To Life In ‘A Complete Unknown’

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“Well, you burst on the scene, already a legend. The unwashed phenomenon. The original vagabond. You strayed into my arms.” – Joan Baez, “Diamonds And Rust”

It took Joan Baez ten years to put pen to paper and immortalise exactly how she defined her relationship with Bob Dylan—a complicated tryst chronicled in much of James Mangold’s new biopic on the musician titled A Complete Unknown. Timothée Chalamet, who is entirely electrifying in the lead role, took five years to fully embody his formative years as the drifting musical prodigy who took the industry by storm.

But for Monica Barbaro, the breakout star who plays the folk legend, it took a few nights’ sleep to fully understand the nexus of the character and the specific responsibility she had in representing Baez on film.

“We were already in production and I started having dreams about her,” Barbaro tells GRAZIA over Zoom. The 34-year-old, dressed more beatnik than bohemian, is in a London hotel room for one of her earliest promotional interviews for the upcoming musical drama.

Within the first few minutes of our discussion, and at my urging, she regaled me with the story of how she came to connect with the real-life Baez. Perhaps tapped into the essence of the city that shaped her on-screen counterpart, Barbaro’s demeanour changed to this almost otherworldly storyteller as she retraced a memory.

“In these dreams, we were hanging out and it was a great time,” she explained. “So I think somewhere in my subconscious I was telling myself that it was all going to be okay, that I could reach out to her and it wouldn’t be a scary thing” she continued.

“I felt like the most Joan thing to do, to be bold enough and just pick up the phone. It was just one conversation. For me, it was one of the most beautiful experiences. To get to hear her voice was life-changing.”

An actor’s instincts are a lifeline for the craft, as we saw in Chalamet’s decision to eschew any pre-recordings and sing live throughout the movie’s musical acts. Yet, it’s not often unconscious fantasies like the ones Barbaro described that prove to be the strongest intuition. “At one point [of the call], she said that she told a friend she was hoping I would reach out.”

“That felt very validating to my choice. I felt like I understood something about her at that moment. She solidified for me that I was on the right path.”

“That [call] was the night before I performed, sang and played guitar in front of a live audience for the first time in the film,” she added. “There was just something that shifted in that 24 hours. It felt that this obsession with perfecting her and getting her right was able to lift a little bit. I had been given an opportunity to just pursue the creative act of bringing her to life in the film, being separate from just paying homage to her.”

The latter is a burden that plagues anyone who portrays a person who has lived. No matter the time removed from their existence, the performance garners criticism and comparison. On A Complete Unknown, these factors were compounded by the level of talent attached to the project and the very quality of the story they’re trying to tell.

Bookmarked in two chapters, 1961 and 1965, the film drops in on Dylan during these pivotal periods in his career. We follow Dylan’s first steps in Greenwich Village as a wayward songwriter travelling from Minnesota with a guitar, the clothes on his back and the ambition to play his idol a song he wrote for him. We see him rise through the ranks in the folk scene, impressing leading figures like Pete Seegar (Edward Norton) Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and, as we know, the genre’s poster girl.

“At the beginning of this film, she’s deemed to be the ‘Queen of Folk’, she’s at the height of her career and on the cover of TIME,” Barbaro said. “But, she’s looking for new songs and she meets this scruffy vagabond kid who she immediately recognises as this genius of a writer with this undeniable charisma that Timothée just performs so well.”

Throughout A Complete Unknown, the peaks and troughs of their romance from their fated meeting backstage at a show to their secretive union on the tour circuit before their eventual split during the zenith of Dylan’s fame become actualised. However, their story transcends the two-hour run time of Mangold’s film.

One of the most heartbreaking moments of their relationship was a conversation unearthed in Martin Scorcese’s 2019 documentary on the Rolling Thunder Revue, a nationwide concert series the pair undertook in 1975, where they discuss their disappointment for one another in their respective marriages. So, with Baez’s blessing in mind, how did Barbaro approach balancing her account of things with the narrative Mangold wanted audiences to see?

“She’s drawn to his mind,” Barbaro says rather democratically of Baez and Dylan’s relationship. “I just did everything I could with what was there in the scene work to show that”.

Yes, there is a kindred spirit to Barbaro and Chalamet’s renditions. Their musical talent and intellect are vessels for connection and desire. In one pivotal moment, Mangold tells the story of how their first sexual encounter came to be. Yet, the most intimate contact we’re exposed to is their harmonies.

“The ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ scene in the apartment for [ Mangold] is very much about building this relationship. Yes, they’re saying things to each other, but this is the morning after and that stays with you as they sing this song together,” Barbaro explains of the subliminal message encrypted into their actions.

“For me, it also felt important to show how much his lyrics meant to her. And her discovering for the first time how truly brilliant he is or how much she cares about what he’s saying,” she added. “[Joan] said that hearing his lyrics was like he was putting words to things she was trying to find a way to say. So I wanted to find the moments throughout the story where I could show that.”

Elsewhere in that scene, Dylan refers to Baez’s songs as an “oil painting at a dentist’s office”. “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,” she quips back. It’s not clear if this exchange was lifted from reality or not. (Dylan himself had a hand in the script. His biggest note was changing Elle Fanning’s character to a more fictionalised version of his first girlfriend and muse.)

As the film continues, the focus shifts from a more elementary focus on Dylan’s interpersonal love triangle to a more nuanced discussion of celebrity. By the time we enter 1965, Dylan is disenfranchised with fame (“It snuck up on me and pulverized me”).

As his artistry transcended beyond his output and began to take on a life of its own, the pressure to produce new material in the vein desired by his audience was all-consuming. Presumably in retaliation, or maybe just to quench his creative desires, Dylan turns away from his acoustic political messaging and to rock and roll. This decision culminated in the film with an epic climax at the Newport Film Festival where he decided to reject tradition and play “Like A Rolling Stone” live for the first time.

The entertainment industry is fickle in allowing its stars to develop and change. Through the lens of a legend, Mangold asks viewers to ponder what audiences are actually owed by their favourite artists. His answer? You’ll simply have to see the movie to find out.

“[Mangold] was always clear about his purpose in making the movie. It’s about an artist who is evolving, what that looks like, and whether or not we let them do that.”

Timothee-Chalamet-A-Complete-Unknown-Behind-The-Scenes

Dylan himself was extremely private, antagonistic to the media and a contrarian at the best of times. (He has been quoted on record making up stories about his origins and has cultivated conflicting musical personas throughout his time. As they explain in the film, “People make up their past. They remember what they want and assume the rest”.)

Like Dylan, Chalamet too has been questioned over his rigorous commitment to the role. What, if anything, did he borrow from his private life to represent someone ravaged by parasocial relationships? “There’s often this obsession with whether or not someone is completely the character,” Barbaro acknowledges.

Denying that Chalamet ever went truly ‘method’, she admits there were times when he was called ‘Bob’ on set in the same way that she was called ‘Joan’. “He was very committed to the role and I mostly interacted with him in costume. But it wasn’t this kind of thing where Timothée wasn’t present either,” she added.

Part of this decision to keep reality off the set was to truly root the work in this pseudo-authentic world. “We just chose to keep the characters in a zone similar to real life in that we didn’t go out for coffee before we worked on this movie, we met in rehearsal,” Barbaro said of this methodology. “With that, we were able to get past any niceties and arrive as our characters to the best of our ability,” she added.

“He had a lot on his shoulders with this film and he carries it beautifully.”

Dylan himself agreed, too. Ahead of the film’s official premiere, the 83-year-old tweeted his praises for the film and Chalamet’s dazzling turn. “There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!) Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

Baez herself hasn’t addressed the film nor Barbaro’s performance and it’s unlikely that she would ever make a statement. She told us herself how she feels about reflection in that seminal 1975 song about Dylan: “We both know what memories can bring. They bring diamonds and rust.”

A Complete Unknown is in Australian cinemas now.