I'm taking on another challenge. This one is The Criterion Challenge 2025. It's the fifth annual, my first try. "There are 52 categories. The goal is to watch any Criterion released film based on the categories ... between 1/1/25-12/31/25." There is no specified order, so I'll watch them as I get to them. Today's category is "Watch a film from the Criterion Channel’s all time favorites lists".
I don't need a challenge to watch an Agnès Varda movie I haven't seen. This one is especially interesting, since I watched A Complete Unknown a few days ago. That one's a biopic, while Jane B. is an intriguing blend of genres. Letterboxd calls it a documentary, while the IMDB calls it a biography and fantasy and Wikipedia lists it among Varda's fiction films. Varda herself calls it "an imaginary biopic". Its premise comes from Jane Birkin, model, actor, singer, realizing she's turning 40 and Varda telling her that's a wonderful age and they should make a movie together about Birkin's life. But Varda didn't want to make the usual retrospective of Birkin's career, so she films Birkin in various period costumes enacting made-up movies, interspersed with interviews where the two women spontaneously (or not) talk about the career of the actress. It is never confusing, really ... what we see provides insight into actor and director. What confuses is the source for what we see. Because it's invented, but purports to tell the "truth" about Jane Birkin, we in the audience are on shaky ground. Real people turn up as "themselves", including Birkin's longtime partner Serge Gainsbourg, their daughter Charlotte, Varda's son, and Jean-Pierre Léaud (not to forget, Varda herself). The enacted scenes include Birkin and Laura Betti as versions of Laurel and Hardy, and Birkin as Calamity Jane and Joan of Arc (we watch as she burns). I suppose you could say Birkin plays "Jane Birkin" as well.
It's all full of Varda's impish humor, and I enjoyed watching it, although I'm not sure there are any larger points to be made. I've seen 8 movies by Varda now, and I've yet to see one I didn't like. Truth is, I bring up my love of her work every time I see a new one. You'd think by now I'd quit being surprised.
I am generally not a big fan of biopics. There have rarely been great ones ... I guess if you count Bonnie and Clyde as a biopic, that one is great. There are some good ones about musicians ... I was partial to Ray, Love and Mercy, and Elvis, as opposed to tripe like Rocketman. There are potential positives to a biopic: it's about someone we care about (or at least know about), and it's always possible a film (or more specifically, an acting performance) can show us a deeper understanding of the artist in question. For me, the best approach is usually to offer a fictionalized version of a real story. I don't know how interesting a biopic of Mick Jagger would be, but Performance is one of my all-time favorite movies. Bob Dylan sits astride popular culture like a colossus, and many have tried to show in film what Dylan "means". Sometimes you get documentaries (Don't Look Back being the obvious, plus two by Scorsese, No Direction Home and Rolling Thunder Revue, and the hard-to-see Eat the Document/Something Is Happening). I'm Not There uses six actors to play Dylan at various times in his career (none of the characters are actually called "Dylan"). The best is likely Inside Llewyn Davis, because it's all made up, not beholden to "facts" but able to create the feel of its times.
Biopics tend to falter in part because the facts are known, and if you don't get them right, people will call you on it. But the facts of a real person's life are not inherently dramatic, and so inevitably some things are fudged to make a better story. How much fudging affects how good such movies are ... if you do too much fudging, you might as well have made a fictionalized version, if you don't fudge enough, you are liable to get something that is accurate but boring.
A Complete Unknown lies somewhere in the middle of all this. James Mangold errs in areas of opinion ... there are legends, there are truths, he usually picks the legend if he has to, but he sticks close enough to what "really happened" that the damage he does is less about accuracy and more about interpretation. So the film builds to Dylan "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival, which happened, but which has become legendary, meaning Mangold can work with the legend even when the legend isn't quite true. It's not that Dylan never plugged in his guitar at Newport, but Mangold emphasizes the crowd's outrage in order to make a better story, and he can do this in part because the legend is a lot like what Mangold shows. He even adds some artistic license, by inserting another famous moment, when someone in the crowd shouts out "Judas!", and Dylan says "I don't believe you" and tells the band to "play fucking loud", all of which happened, but in a different time and place with a different band. It works, but it's also a bit false.
I'm sure these things don't matter to people who are going to see Timothée Chalamet play an iconic figure. Chalamet is fine, he doesn't embarrass himself, although the script doesn't do him many favors ... the Dylan of A Complete Unknown is almost constantly inward and morose, and he is indeed a complete unknown to us by the end of the movie. Austin Butler in Elvis was allowed to shine ... we saw the warts, but we also saw why Elvis connected with an audience.
There's also the problem of trying to capture people that are real to us without competing with our prior understand of those people. Chalamet sounds enough like Dylan (who can't do a decent Dylan imitation?), while Monica Barbaro, who has a lovely voice, doesn't sound a lot like Joan Baez (because who can imitate that remarkable voice?). Barbaro is one of the best things about the film ... Baez is fleshed out effectively, giving Barbaro something to work with. Meanwhile, Suze Rotolo is dumped on. First, the movie doesn't use her real name (they call her "Sylvie Russo"). Then, the usually-fine Elle Fanning is saddled with a stock role of the woman who is left behind. (Rotolo's memoir, A Freewheelin' Time, is a fascinating read, and not just because Dylan is within the pages.) Finally, as is often the case in biopics, celebrities we know are name dropped, often given a line or two, or even have their role in the story exaggerated for dramatic effect. (Examples here include Dave Van Ronk, a crucial figure who pops up, nameless as I recall, for one brief scene, Johnny Cash, an important person to Dylan but not necessarily during the time of the movie, or Maria Muldaur, who I didn't even know was a character until I saw the credits.)
Ultimately, A Complete Unknown was not nearly as bad as I feared it would be. As a Dylan fan since the 1960s, I'm glad I saw it. But when it is over, you still have no insight into how Bob Dylan wrote the anthem of his times, "Like a Rolling Stone". Perhaps, as my wife said, that insight is impossible to acquire.
Here is Dylan singing "Like a Rolling Stone" at Newport:
And here is his cataclysmic performance of the song in England in 1966:
One of the true titans of American blues. It's impossible to pick the best from Wolf's enormous output. His recording of Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster", among others, got the attention of The Rolling Stones, whose version of the song hit the top of the British pop charts. When the Stones appeared on the U.S. television series Shindig!, they helped get their inspiration on as a guest, performing "How Many More Years" for all the American teenyboppers:
As I say, you can't pick just one of his recordings, but I admit I'm partial to this one:
I'm taking on another challenge. This one is The Criterion Challenge 2025. It's the fifth annual, my first try. "There are 52 categories. The goal is to watch any Criterion released film based on the categories ... between 1/1/25-12/31/25." There is no specified order, so I'll watch them as I get to them. My second category is "Watch a film from the year you were born".
White Mane is a classic short from Albert Lamorisse. His next film, The Red Balloon, also a short, won an Oscar. Both films are beautiful shot ... White Mane is lyrical in its approach to a story about the friendship between a young boy and a wild horse. I feel a bit curmudgeonly that while I appreciate these movies, and am happy to add my praise to the piles that have heaped upon them in the past, I don't feel the need to watch again. Charming, something you can show to children but also something adults will appreciate, and there aren't enough films like that.