Watch an Exclusive ‘A Complete Unknown’ Clip with Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan and Boyd Holbrook as a Drunken Johnny Cash

Reviews are in for James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” and Timothée Chalamet has earned unanimous praise for his performance as the iconic, spiritually wanderlusting folk singer in 1965. That was the year where, at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan debuted his electric set in a musical style that would come to define his career, previously acoustic guitar-based. Most pundits expect a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Chalamet, making it his second after “Call Me by Your Name.”

In the above video, IndieWire shares an exclusive clip from the film ahead of its Christmas Day release date. The clip features Chalamet as Dylan in morning-after mode while staying at a motel in Rhode Island during the Newport Folk Festival, leading up to his infamous electric performance which drew boos and rapture in equal measure.

Also in this clip, you’ll catch “Narcos” and “The Bikeriders” actor Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, clearly still drunk from the night before, waxing about how he took a drive to “see the ocean.” No one sober says that at dawn. A few years later, Dylan would go on to do the duet on “Girl from the North Country” for 1969’s “Nashville Skyline.” In the period of time spanning “A Complete Unknown,” they were mostly acquaintances and admirers of one another.

Here’s what Boyd Holbrook told IndieWire previously about Chalamet’s performance: “I think Timmy disappears in this role. He’s had so much preparation. He’s a fantastic musician. He’s a great performer. I think this is some of the best work I’ve seen on set where you just kind of let him exist and let the creature be. He told me on set, ‘When this is over, it’s over, so let’s just be it for now.’ I find that to be really special and there are not many artists like that around.”

Of his own performance, Holbrook, who embellished his guitar skills in the audition process and then self-taught more ahead of production, said, “I didn’t play guitar and sing in the beginning of this. It was a crash course into learning how to do that as quickly as possible; that’s the greatest thing about what I had to do. I had to immerse myself into something for three to four hours a day, for months and months at a time, and get it down so much that it became like existence, and you’re not really acting.”

“A Complete Unknown” opens in theaters on Wednesday, December 25 from Searchlight Pictures.