At the beginning of December, out of the blue, writer Elijah Wald acquired an early Christmas current from Bob Dylan. In a message posted to social media, the legendarily elusive singer-songwriter praised the casting of Timothée Chalamet as his youthful self in the upcoming biopic A Full Unknown after which took a second to salute Wald’s guide Dylan Goes Electrical!, which helped encourage the brand new movie. “It’s a incredible retelling of occasions from the early Sixties that led as much as the fiasco at Newport,” wrote Dylan. “After you’ve seen the film learn the guide.”

After I meet up with him at his house in Philadelphia, Wald sounds as if he’s barely recovered from the shock. “It was astonishing,” he says. “Utterly surprising. Traditionally, he merely hasn’t accomplished that. I had requested his supervisor in some unspecified time in the future whether or not he had seen the guide, and the response was: Bob doesn’t learn Dylan books. So this was a really nice shock.”

A Full Unknown dramatises the early years of Dylan’s much-mythologised profession, from his hitchhiked journey to New York out of wintry Minnesotan obscurity in 1961, to his rise within the Greenwich Village people scene and eventual embrace of high-powered electrical rock’n’roll just some brief years later. The Impartial critic Clarisse Loughrey felt the movie performs it too protected, calling it “dutiful work” however arguing “dutiful doesn’t actually minimize it with Dylan”. American reviewers have tended to be kinder, with Selection calling the biopic “incandescent” and praising scenes that make “your coronary heart burst and your head spin on the identical time”.

For his half, Wald says he was happy with how Stroll the Line director James Mangold dealt with the difference. Whereas A Full Unknown is “not traditionally correct,” he tells me, “it’s poetically correct”. Wald’s guide examines the connection between people’s elder statesman Pete Seeger and the younger Dylan, intent on leaving the people scene in his rearview mirror. “Within the movie they take that concept and personalise it,” explains Wald. “Dylan and Seeger, in actual fact, weren’t in the identical room fairly often however within the movie they make it a private relationship and it’s fairly terribly true to who they have been. It didn’t occur that approach, but it surely might have.”

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Whereas there are not any sleigh bells to be heard on the soundtrack, and no scenes of Chalamet and co-star Elle Fanning nuzzling below the mistletoe, there’s one thing becoming about the truth that the movie will likely be launched within the US on Christmas Day (though, sadly, it’ll take one other three weeks to achieve the UK). Nick Pupo, the comic and actor who performs Peter Yarrow of people trio Peter, Paul and Mary within the movie, says the film’s cross-generational attraction suits snugly with the festive spirit.

“It’s so broad,” he says. “I like Dylan a lot, and I grew up as a millennial at a time when most individuals had already forgotten about him or didn’t care. What’s nice about this film is it celebrates the time, the individuals and the music. I instructed my nieces I used to be going to be in a film about Bob Dylan they usually have been like: ‘OK?’ Then I used to be like: ‘Timothée Chalamet’s in it’ they usually have been like: ‘OH MY GOD!’ I feel it’ll be actually cool for them to observe it. Stroll the Line launched lots of people to Johnny Money’s music, and I’m positive this may [do the same for Dylan].”

Past the movie’s large attraction, it additionally makes lots of sense for A Full Unknown to reach into the world on the identical date as Jesus Christ – and, coincidentally, Shane MacGowan, who was born on Christmas Day in 1957, and of whom Dylan was a giant fan. Dylan has lengthy since confirmed himself a Christmas fanatic. Again in 2006, he devoted two strong hours to the topic on his Theme Time Radio Hour present, taking part in an assortment of his favorite festive tunes, studying from Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and reciting “’Twas the evening earlier than Christmas”. He additionally took the time to replicate on the Seventeenth-century British parliament’s try and abolish Christmas in 1647, reassuring listeners that: “Right here on Theme Time Radio Hour we prefer to rejoice Christmas year-round, it doesn’t matter what Oliver Cromwell thinks.”

Dylan cemented his standing as a Christmas staple three years later with the discharge of Christmas within the Coronary heart, an album that drew baffled scepticism from critics when it was first introduced. Dylan’s singular oeuvre has been described in some ways over the many years, however hardly ever as “jolly”. But, one way or the other, an album that blends conventional requirements like “O Come, All Ye Trustworthy” and “O Little City of Bethlehem” with covers of a number of the extra obscure tracks he’d picked out for his radio present, akin to Hal Moore and Invoice Fredericks’s jaunty “Should Be Santa”, made for an endearing hear that’s change into an annual custom for a lot of followers.

The music video for the latter track represents maybe the giddiest and most downright foolish three minutes you’ll discover anyplace in Dylan’s lengthy and storied profession, as he dances and carouses his approach via a drunken polka at a late-night home social gathering whereas carrying an extended flowing wig and a white prime hat that he later switches for a Santa hat. Rolling Stone described it merely as “bonkers”.

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Whereas some had initially handled the album as a joke and assumed Dylan would too, in actual fact, he performs the songs with out a trace of irony. Certain, no person would ever accuse Dylan of being a standard Christmas crooner within the mould of Bing Crosby and even Michael Bublé, however there’s one thing irresistibly charming about his gravel-throated renditions of “Silver Bells” and “Have Your self a Merry Little Christmas”. You’ll be able to virtually hear the tinsel-like twinkle in his eye as he takes the reins of singing cowboy Gene Autry’s “Right here Comes Santa Claus” or casts off for “Christmas Island”.

In a 2009 interview with journalist Invoice Flanagan, printed in The Massive Problem, Dylan mentioned: “Critics [who assumed I was being ironic] are on the surface trying in. They’re undoubtedly not followers or the viewers that I play to. They might don’t have any gut-level understanding of me and my work, what I can and may’t do – the scope of all of it. Even at this time limit they nonetheless don’t know what to make of me.” As to why he performed the songs straight, he added: “There wasn’t some other strategy to play it. These songs are a part of my life, identical to people songs. It’s important to play them straight too.”

Though Dylan – born Robert Zimmerman – grew up in a Jewish family, he mentioned that he by no means felt ignored of Christmas throughout his childhood in Minnesota. He shared fond recollections of “loads of snow, jingle bells, Christmas carollers going from home to accommodate, sleighs within the streets, city bells ringing, nativity performs” and described a really perfect Christmas dinner of “mashed potatoes and gravy, roast turkey and collard greens, turnip greens, biscuit dressing, cornbread and cranberry sauce”.

Dylan famously turned a born-again evangelical Christian for a handful of years from 1979 to 1981, releasing a trio of gospel-inspired albums in that point, and whereas he nonetheless describes himself as a “true believer”, his devotion to Christmas seems to be rooted extra in nostalgia than non secular fervour. Christmas has the very best songs of any vacation, he mirrored, “perhaps as a result of it’s so worldwide and all people can relate to it in their very own approach”.

Dylan additionally put the eye garnered by his unlikely Christmas launch to good use, dedicating all proceeds from the album to homeless charities together with Feeding America within the US, Disaster within the UK and the United Nations World Meals Programme. “They get meals straight to the individuals,” he defined on the time. “No navy organisation, no forms, no governments to cope with.” These royalty donations have continued in perpetuity, so cash introduced in by the album continues to be dispersed to these in want every Christmas.

Inside Dylan’s caustic, inscrutable persona there lies the center of somebody who simply desires to unfold somewhat Christmas cheer. His biopic, then, couldn’t be higher timed. In spite of everything, A Full Unknown tells the story of a miraculous boy little one who arrives with a head full of untamed, prophetic concepts, upsets the institution and finally ends up altering the world. What may very well be extra Christmassy than that?

‘A Full Unknown’ is in US cinemas on Christmas Day, earlier than arriving within the UK on 17 January