A Complete Unknown, out in theaters on Dec. 25, stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a highly-anticipated biopic that traces the singer’s rise in the New York City folk music scene of the 1960s.
Focusing on the period between 1961 and 1965—when Dylan first became a big star—the story is told chronologically, and looks at the people who helped him along the way, both musicians like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and love interests, like Suze Russo (Elle Fanning) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). The film culminates in Dylan’s controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, at a time when the folk music scene was split between those who embraced the kinds of electric guitars that defined rock ‘n’ roll and those who thought the acoustic guitar was the more authentic form of entertainment. And true to the film’s title, even viewers who know Dylan’s songs by heart will not come away from the film feeling like they 100% know Dylan.
“He had become the voice of a generation by age 24,” says Elijah Wald, who wrote a book that inspired the film Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.
TIME spoke to experts on Dylan’s life about what the movie gets right and wrong about the folk singer’s rise to fame.
How did Dylan get his big break?
Dylan was “in the right place at the right time,” says Michael Gray, author of Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan. There were several clubs in New York City where musicians could play, as long as they didn’t expect to get paid. Dylan “pushed his way in there,” hitching a ride with two friends and arriving in New York City’s Greenwich Village in January 1961.
In 1961, Robert Shelton’s glowing New York Times review of Dylan’s supporting act at a club helped the young singer land a record deal at Columbia Records, at a time when many folk musicians had contracts with smaller labels.
However, Bob Dylan (1962), his first album with Columbia, was a flop….
