PHOTO COURTESY SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

You’ll forgive a somewhat more vulgar term than I usually use in this space, but I think there’s a quote that contains the thesis statement of “A Complete Unknown.”

The film depicts the young life of Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), from his arrival in New York through his mythologized performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Somewhat early in that pivotal four-year period, he began an occasional romantic dalliance with fellow folk singer Joan Baez (​​Monica Barbaro).

One morning, when Dylan is being himself, Baez opines: “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”

Dylan agrees.

It is that perspective — that Bob Dylan was both a genius and a standoffish jerk — that separates “A Complete Unknown” somewhat from its biopic ilk. While it still has the pitfalls of the genre (just wait for the superfluous appearance of Johnny Cash), director and co-writer James Mangold presents Dylan as he is rather than engaging in the sanitizing hero worship so many similar films prefer.

Mangold, who wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks, is clearly a fan and can’t resist conferring mythic importance into certain moments in Dylan’s history. A meeting with an ailing Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) becomes something of a cosmic transference; a friendship with Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) feels less like a musical partnership and more like a team-up of the folk-music equivalent of the Avengers.

Occasionally overwrought though these moments are, they’re effective; a keen sense of drama and great production design (by François Audouy) transfer the viewer to a romanticized, compelling facsimile of ’60s New York. The film is even funny on occasion, often due to the efforts of Dan Fogler as Dylan’s longtime manager, Albert Grossman.

Less effective is the treatment of the women in Dylan’s life; slightly fictionalized girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) floats into the film when it’s time for her to be conveniently spurned, and Baez serves less as a rounded character than a reminder of Dylan’s flaws.

In the end, Dylan neither transformed the world nor murdered folk music by plugging in his guitar at Newport — but it serves as an effective enough ending for an effective enough film. Big missed opportunity, though, in not once again casting Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. We could’ve finally established the musician biopic cinematic universe.

My Rating: 7/10

“A Complete Unknown” will play Pittsburgh theaters beginning Dec. 25.