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I just watched the new Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown and I see it has sparked a lot of discussion. But what I haven't seen is anybody talking about the clear Platonic vibes. I think the movie very effectively toes the line of portraying Bob as a Platonist while also showing how he falls short of the Platonic ideal. I should preface this all by saying I don't think they had Plato on as a consultant or anything. But there is definitely something about this movie and I'm here to put my finger on it.
The film seems to be calling on Bob as a Platonist at two levels. First is how Bob and the film seem to agree in identifying him as a true Platonist. Second is how Bob's actions show the degree to which he actually is a Platonist. I think this distinction is key to understanding how the film actually wants us to think about Bob.
From the very beginning the film leads us to think about Bob as a true Platonist. He basically just appears out of nowhere, his identity fully formed, his purpose clear. When people ask Bob about his past, he gives at best vague and at worst conflicting accounts. It's clear that Bob disconnects his identity from his past, and the film portrays this as successful. This disconnect seems to be a fundamental difference the film finds between Bob and others. And in Platonic terms, it's an important difference: human identity is supposed to be something higher and less tangible than ephemeral material identity. The film posits Bob as having successfully recognized himself as his transcendant immaterial soul rather than fixating on his ephemeral material aspects as the people around him do.
Consider Joan Baez and Sylvie Russo. In both cases, Bob and the film seem to contrast them with Bob based off of this fact of identity. The argument goes that while Bob has transcended the material world, recognizing his truer self, Joan and Sylvie have failed to do so, and therefore cannot understand his genius. In Joan's case, for example, there is the scene where she asks Bob where he learned to play the guitar. He says he taught himself, that he learned from cowboys at the carnival. Joan expresses disbelief, saying that she took formal lessons. By putting Joan in the position of the one who's asking questions, and so expressing interest, the film seems to imply that to Joan, how someone learned to play the guitar is an important aspect of their identity as a musician, while to Bob, how someone learned to play the guitar is a mere fact of the past. In Sylvie's case, as another example, there is the scene where she tells Bob she doesn't know him at all despite having dated him for a while now. She says Bob knows all kinds of things about her, but she knows nothing about him. To which Bob says that she told him all those things. The implication here is that he doesn't care about those aspects of her. To Bob, he knows Sylvie, whether or not he knows about her past or any other aspect of her material identity, because to him, identity transcends the ephemeral. But to Sylvie, she doesn't know Bob, because to her, someone's identity is intimately connected to their past, or at least more easily communicated through it. In both cases, Joan and Sylvie, there is a fundamental disconnect between their sense of identity and Bob's sense of identity, fueling their miscommunications about the self.
The film also offers us a Platonic way in which Bob communicates his self. The transcendant immaterial soul is made in the image of the Platonic god. The ultimate source of Platonic power is The One, the transcendant principle behind the entire universe. The One, through its immense willpower, emanates The Intelligence contemplating The One. And The Intelligence, by contemplating The One, emanates The Soul. The relationship between The One and The Intelligence is like the sum of all relationships between a point and a circle emanating from it. For example, a point has one point, while a circle has infinitely many points. Or a point is zero dimensional, while a circle is two dimensional. A point implies nothing but itself, while a circle implies a center point. And so on. And likewise, the relationship between The Intelligence and The Soul is similarly expansive. Another example is the Sun. It emanates light like radii that imply a center. It causes planets to orbit in circles that suggest a center. So while its emanations are not the same as the Sun, they all are derived from it and communicate its presence. So if Bob Dylan is the transcendant Platonist he and the film suggest, then we should find emanations communicating his identity in the same way the circle communicates the center the planets communicate the Sun. And when we look at his music and his audience, we find these emanations. Taking Bob as a one, his music is an intelligence. His music is an image of Bob in the same way The Intelligence is an image of The One. Likewise, taking his music as an intelligence, his audience is a soul. His audience is an image of his music in the same way The Soul is an image of The Intelligence, and further, his audience is an image of him in the way The Soul is an image of The One. This is the excuse Bob uses in refusing to communicate himself through material aspects. Despite disconnecting himself from his material identity, he is still knowable through this Platonic sort of communication.
Even instinct alone is enough to tell us that Bob is an asshole. But the Platonic god is supposed to be the ultimate source of virtue, so the movie uses this gut instinct to push us to look into how Bob philosophically falls short of truth. Two foundational failures are his misanthropy and continued desire, both of which limit his approach towards the Platonic ideal. He also fails on a secondary level to recognize and correct his own failures, although arguably the climax of the movie hinges on this growth.
His most obvious failure is his egotistic misanthropy. He's reminiscent of Dr. Gregory House in his consistent inability to reconcile himself to humanity. In the case of Dr. House, he excuses his misanthropy because he is smart. By saving the lives of enough patients, the argument goes, he makes up for his other moral deficiencies. It's the same basic argument with Bob Dylan. By being intellectual enough, he makes up for his other moral deficiencies. The thing with this argument is that even if it can get you to being morally passable, it definitely can't get you to the point of moral perfection. In Dr. House's case, we can imagine an alternate timeline where he saves as many patients, but he's also nicer. In Bob Dylan's case, we can imagine an alternate timeline where he writes as much music, but he's also more interested in other people. If you are excusing some deficiency by being good enough in another way, you could always be better by also not having that deficiency.
This deficiency is compounded by his inability to control his desires. He cheats on Sylvie with Joan. He continues to appear in both of their lives well after a normal person would consider it case closed. One part of this issue is that it demonstrates how little he understands his own desires. He clearly seeks some sort of human connection, but he doesn't understand what he wants out of it, nor does he at all consider what the other humans want out of it. The other part of this issue is that it shows a refusal to care about a part of himself. Rather than recognizing that he seems to feel these desires, and wondering why, and addressing them, he denies that he feels them, while continuing to engage in the negative behavior.
This failure to recognize and correct is systemic, not particular to his desire. It stems from the same source as his misanthropy, the ego. In both cases, Bob takes a short sighted approach to his philosophy. The movie sets him up to be a true Platonist, and he seems to identify himself as one, but he fails to recognize the ways in which he has not yet achieved the Platonic ideal, and in doing so, languishes in a contradictory middle territory. In reality it's as impossible for a human to attain the perfection of The One as for a circle to attain the perfection of a point. So when the movie positions Bob as enlightened, it makes him seem to miss the point far more than someone who doesn't know the point exists.
What I'm pretty sure is the climax of the movie, when Bob plays a folk song after having gone electric at the folk festival, does seem to indicate a degree of self awareness, that he has recognized a need to care for the other. So even though he is not perfect from the beginning and doesn't become perfect by the end, I think there is a good argument that he grew. Ultimately, I think there's a lot more that could be read in to this and really any movie, but hopefully, I've given a good foothold for reading more Platonic themes out of it.