A Complete Unknown is one of the rare biopics that was made with involvement from its subject—or rather, as much involvement as Bob Dylan would give. Dylan met with director/co-writer James Mangold to briefly talk about what the film was about. and according to Mangold, he liked the answer. Mangold also made one major change to A Complete Unknown at Dylan’s request regarding his past life, and it results in some of the film’s best scenes. But even a filmmaker of Mangold’s caliber couldn’t capture the whole of Dylan’s life, as A Complete Unknown is missing one major relationship: his marriage to his first wife, Sara Lownds.
Bob Dylan’s First Marriage Led to an Influential Documentary and Album
Dylan first met Sara Lownds while she was working for Time-Life, Inc., the former conglomerate that published the Time and Life magazines. At the time, she was married to photographer Hans Lownds, and he was romantically involved with fellow singer Joan Baez. It also turns out that Time-Life, Inc. was interested in making films—which led to Sara introducing Dylan to filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker. Pennebaker wound up filming Dylan during his 1965 tour in England, and the resulting footage became Don’t Look Back. Don’t Look Back is often regarded as one of the best documentary films of all time, and Pennebaker chalks it up to Sara’s shrewd dealmaking. “She was supposed to be a secretary, but she ran the place,” he said when interviewed for A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks. Eventually, Sara and Dylan married in 1965, having four children and even moving to a house in Woodstock, New York. But the marriage would run into its fair share of problems, especially when Dylan started taking art classes from renowned painter Norman Raeben. According to Dylan:
“I went home after that first day and my wife never did understand me ever since that day. That’s when our marriage started breaking up. She never knew what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, and I couldn’t possibly explain it.”
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Things only grew rockier from there as Dylan prepared to make his directorial debut with Renaldo and Clara, which not only featured Sara in the titular role of Clara but his former lover Joan Baez as a mysterious woman in white. Eventually, Dylan and Sara divorced in 1977, but many believe that the last legs of their marriage influenced Dylan’s album—including their son Jakob.
There’s a Good Reason ‘A Complete Unknown’ Didn’t Include Bob Dylan’s Marriage
While Bob Dylan’s first marriage was a major influence on his creative career, there’s a good reason A Complete Unknown didn’t include it—and that’s because the film is centered around a specific period in Dylan’s life. That period obviously covers Dylan’s rise to fame and his performance using electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, which took place in July—while Dylan had already met Sara a year prior to the Newport festival, the two weren’t married until November 1965. That being said, A Complete Unknown doesn’t shy away from showcasing how Dylan could be outright terrible in a relationship; he refuses to open up to his girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning) and then cheats on her with Joan Baez (played by Monica Barbaro). In what might be one of the best parts of A Complete Unknown, Baez tells Dylan that he’s “kind of an asshole”—an argument he doesn’t refute.
Bob Dylan Has Been Very Protective of His Personal Life
The other major reason that Bob Dylan’s marriage wasn’t covered in A Complete Unknown is that he tends to be very personal about his personal life—including the people around him who were a part of it. A great example concerns Elle Fanning’s Sylvie, who is a fictionalized version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo (as per Dylan’s request to Mangold). Though he took umbrage with Sara not being mentioned in the movie, podcaster Ian Grant expressed his opinion that Dylan and Sylvie’s relationship in A Complete Unknown mirrors the musician’s actual marriage. “I think on that basic understanding level of…someone who isn’t out to make a name for themselves, that’s exactly the kind of person that he ends up spending the next 10 years being married to,” he told Variety. A Complete Unknown might have shed light on Bob Dylan’s early years, but there are some doors that it obviously left unlocked.
A Complete Unknown
- Release Date
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December 25, 2024
- Runtime
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140 minutes
