Pete Seeger - Blog Posts

I have family of choice in Barcelona, and it pleases me to learn not just of their struggles, but of their triumphs. Quiero a todo voz.

Watched A Complete Unknown.

Before I get into it, the more important review is that of my parents (with which I concur): the music's really good and that its wildly unfair to present Pete Seeger singing Wimoweh and expect the audience to not sing along. So, if you like Dylan or 60's folk music, it's at least a lot of fun.

As a movie though, it basically fails. There are two parallel histories being told: that of Bob Dylan's career progression in the 60's and how it relates to the entrenched folk elements represented by the Newport Festival and Pete Seeger, and that of the United States and the omnipresent and constant political and social turmoil. Occasionally the relation between the two narratives seems almost as if it's being seriously presented: a flash of Woody Guthrie's This machine kills fascists sticker, Sylvie Russo taking Dylan to a civil rights speech, archive footage of Dylan at the March on Washington, Alan Lomax scoffing not primarily at an electric blues band but at a white electric blues band, one of Dylan's band mates complaining that music has to change because they shot Malcolm X immediately followed by Al Grossman lecturing Pete Seeger that "there's more to sing about than just justice", the workman's band playing immediately before Dylan's final set. Beyond these vague allusions to folk as a real socio-political object though, the movie is essentially uninterested in the real world motivations of its characters. Seeger comes closest to elaborating the actual context of the music he cares about with his parable of the tablespoon brigade, but even then its couched in vagueries and gestures but for a movie with single digit lines spoken by Black characters even this falls completely flat. This really got on my nerves, to make a movie about folk music and to allude to the extremely important political context of the movement, but to not have anything at all to say about how it interacts with Dylan's relationship to music, and in doing so to basically completely omit any real motivation for why the main character is even conflicted about the two different styles outside of essentially saying that he likes the way one sounds better than the other. Impressive performances and great music unfortunately cannot make up for a character who, as advertised in the title, is even after watching the film a complete unknown.