Timothée Chalamet Mixes Up the Medicine With ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ Performance

Timothée Chalamet recreates one of Bob Dylan’s most famous songs and visuals with a version of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” for the upcoming biopic, A Complete Unknown.

Chalamet’s new recording of the 1965 classic is the fullest offering yet of the actor’s take on Dylan’s singular singing voice. The previously released trailer for a Complete Unknown just included snippets of his renditions of songs like “Girl from the North Country” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” 

The visual, meanwhile, appears to incorporate some scenes from the upcoming biopic, plus some behind-the-scenes footage. And of course, a good chunk of it finds Chalamet recreating the classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, in which Dylan casually goes through a stack of cue cards emblazoned with the song’s lyrics. 

A Complete Unknown is set to arrive in theaters on Dec. 25, 2024. Directed by James Mangold (who helmed the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line), the film chronicles the early part of Dylan’s career, from his days in the Greenwich Village music scene to his famous electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. 

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Along with Chalamet, the movie will star Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning and Sylvie Russo, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Cash, Norbert Leo Butz as Alan Lomax, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman, and Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie. 

Speaking with Rolling Stone in July about the film, Mangold said: “I didn’t want to turn Bob Dylan into a simple character with a simple thing to unlock that then makes you go, ‘Ah, now I get him.’ I don’t think that’s possible, having gotten to know him. I also think it’s pretty clear he spent most of his life trying to avoid that exact act by anybody. Which is an act of, by nature, reduction — reducing someone to a simple epiphany, a plot-point Freudian history of their life.”