Featuring no less than two documentaries by Martin Scorsese (No Direction Home, Rolling Thunder Revue), an inspired-by-the-life biopic by Todd Haynes (I'm Not There), and countless other portrayals and parodies, much of cinema has devoted itself to telling the story of Bob Dylan. The sum of it all could lead a person to wonder what's left to be mined. But that's not really the question being asked in the production offices in and around Hollywood. The real question is what audiences are left to hear this story. For all their critical acclaim, documentaries and experimental biopics can only reach a relatively low viewership ceiling, leaving the vast majority of the moviegoing public untapped.

That's where A Complete Unknown comes in, a straightforward studio biopic featuring all the trimmings that have defined this cornerstone genre of the industry for decades. And in a year where more than one of these ventures down the Wikipedia page has landed with a sour note (Bob Marley: One Love, Back to Black), there's a comforting feeling to seeing the old reliable go off without a hitch.

It's out with the old and in with the new at the start of the story, although the old was never really born to begin with. Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) finds himself the elder statesman of folk music in the early 1960s, a minuscule subgenre in desperate need of revitalization after decades of weary tales inspired by the Dust Bowl and other rural hardships. Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), Pete's best friend and closest contemporary in terms of star power, sits in a New Jersey hospital unable to speak from the then-unknown Huntington's Disease. During one of Pete's visits, a Minnesota-born drifter named Bobby Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) walks in to perform a song he wrote for Woody.

The rest is history from there; a quick rags-to-riches story where the price of fame crashes down on our humble hero. While all of that is more or less true within veteran screenwriter Jay Cocks and director James Mangold's script, Bob Dylan is not humble nor the virtuosic hero of this story. What Mozart is to classical music in Amadeus, Dylan is to folk music in A Complete Unknown. He's a bit of an asshole, denying people common social courtesy and always looking to rebel against the status quo. Luckily for him, everyone else in America is starving for a shakeup to the system. Thanks to his politically active girlfriend at the time, Sylvie (Elle Fanning), Dylan found himself at the forefront of the culture wars. How much this shift in national ideology influenced his early music isn't fully explained, a deft decision by Cocks and Mangold to retain Dylan's titular persona.

The constant pouring of musical genius from Dylan lends itself to nearly fifty music sequences, all of them featuring Chalamet vocals and hands on the guitar. Mangold never lets us forget that fact, keeping his camera steady on the target and the editing to a minimum. It allows the performances to breathe, matching the more mellow wavelength that folk songs operate on. The frames often remain beautiful without the melodies, the cinematography by Phedon Papamichael, and the production design by François Audouy illuminating with the warm hues of the decade.

Chalamet fits the rest of Dylan's persona with ease. It'd be easy to label the voice, mannerisms, and chainsmoking as overacting, but that's just the kind of person Dylan was. Often up on the stage with him is Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, the pair creating a wonderful harmony. Both she and Sylvie have to experience The Bob Dylan Show at all hours of the day, the mixture of half-truths and tall tales breaking down any hope of a lasting relationship. The only one who gets a portion of a rosy experience is Pete, with Norton surprising in a cuddly performance after several thorny decades.

Boyd Holbrook makes a few appearances as Johnny Cash, an almost meta decision considering Mangold's helming of the singer's 2005 biopic Walk the Line. Mangold has learned a thing or two since then, trusting his audience a little more and painting around his protagonists just as much as he does within the lines. Those brushstrokes are big and broad, creating a rich experience that soothes our eyes and ears.