Music biopic focusing on Bob Dylan at 19, when he arrived in New York City in 1961 to start his meteoric rise to become one of music’s most influential singer-songwriters, culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

The city was just settling into its role as a nexus for the budding folk music scene, and the times were a-changin’. Bob was there hoping to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie, then hospitalized. He got in and proceeded to impress the folk legend, as well as his friend Pete Seeger (a terrific Edward Norton), with a new song. He was on his way, and James Mangold (Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari) lets the man’s story unfold slowly, focusing on the characters in his life more than his music.

Timothee Chalamet goes deep to capture the moodiness, the opacity and the genius, and does a fair impersonation. Even sings good. But he stops tantalizingly short of disappearing into the role. To be fair, though, who could? The other actors are equally good, but I never forgot that they were acting.

At the end I felt no closer to the man than I was before (and I’ve met him). Also, it oversimplifies things and plays fast and loose with historical facts and situations, but that’s fairly common in cinematic biographies. These are quibbles. It’s a masterful effort and well worth seeing. But it’s apparently easier to celebrate a mystery than it is to explain it. (141 min)