TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Bob Dylan a contrast to 'narcissistic' modern stars, says biopic director
A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, has been well received by critics and received eight Oscar nominations on Thursday, including for best picture and best director.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
US director James Mangold attends the New York premiere of “A Complete Unknown“ at the SVA theatre in New York, the United States, on Dec. 13, 2024. (AFP/Angela Weiss)
B
ob Dylan's rich legacy of more than 50 albums is a counterpoint to "narcissistic" modern music focused on "me, me, me", the director of the recently released biopic about the singer told AFP.
James Mangold, who was in Paris ahead of the release of A Complete Unknown in French cinemas, said that delving into Dylan's early career in the 1960s involved immersing himself in a different, simpler world.
"It was really clear making the movie, that not just Bob's music, but that time in music was different," the director of Indiana Jones 5 and Le Mans '66 said. "And I feel like most music now is so narcissistically about me, me, me."
"'You hurt me'. 'I feel blah, blah, blah'. 'You betrayed me'. 'That's not nice what you did to me'," he said, reeling off the familiar modern themes of pop music from Taylor Swift to Beyonce.
"Music was about more than just me, me, me [in Dylan's era]. It was about the world. It was about the mysteries of the world. And I miss that."
A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, has been well received by critics and received eight Oscar nominations on Thursday, including for best picture and best director.
Mangold said it was intended as a study in "the loneliness of genius" and the difficulties of celebrity for Dylan. "A great artist, but maybe not great at being famous", he suggested.
"He described the feeling of being Bob Dylan in 1962 or 1963 as being a lonely feeling, in very specific ways: the loneliness of riding to your concert in a car, the loneliness of being on stage alone with your guitar," said Mangold.
Where many people viewed Dylan's behaviour as arrogant and concluded he was an "asshole", Mangold asked: "What if he isn't an asshole? What if it's loneliness?"
Dylan recorded a remarkable 300 songs in just his first three years in the music business. The writer of "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Desolation Row" is adored by fans for his music and literary style.
He received the 2016 Nobel literature prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", according to the committee.
"I don't know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written," he told the CBS channel in 2004.
