The gift of Bob Dylan’s music is to make the world seem weirder, or rather to reveal the world to be as strange as it really is. He sings of life as a flow of jumbled-up signs and sensations, some real and some not, carrying meaning beyond words. Even at his most strident, he wheezes out an anti-narrative: Thou shalt not simplify, classify, categorize.
A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s biopic focused on the bard’s early career, understands this—and betrays it. The film portrays Dylan as a prophet bringing independence and idiosyncrasy to a world of rule-enforcers and followers. Timothée Chalamet does excellent work striking Dylan’s balance of unworldliness and humanity. Yet no movie about unconventionality should be as blandly conventional as this one is.
The problem starts at the level of conception. Mangold has chosen to examine the most chewed-over chapters of Dylan’s career: his early days in the New York City folk scene, beginning in 1961 and leading up to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he shocked acoustic-guitar purists by going electric. Newsie cap on his head, Dylan blows into Greenwich Village at the film’s start, gigs around, and quickly wins the admiration of his idols—Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash—as well as of the scene’s rising star, Joan Baez. Rebellion brings acclaim, which brings public expectations, which brings more rebellion: a cycle that’s true to Dylan’s life, but also that of many previous iconoclasts portrayed on film.
Mangold knows the rules of biopics well; his 2005 Cash exploration, Walk the Line, set the modern template for how to bend a complex individual’s life into a satisfying arc. Here, the director and his co-writer, Jay Cocks, diverge from the template in one intriguing way. Dylan’s habit of lying and misdirection has made the question of who the man born Robert Zimmerman really is, and why exactly he does what he does, one of music’s enduring mysteries. Rather than try to crack the case with backstory providing psychological cause and effect, A Complete Unknown just lets Dylan be … unknown. When he tells Baez that he used to be a carnie, she exasperatedly replies that he’s full of it. He may well be. But he’s living out an idea that he professes in a key bit of dialogue: To succeed onstage, you have to inspire the same fascination as a freak show.
Chalamet does just that. He plays Dylan with heavy-lidded stillness, making him seem perpetually on the verge of dozing off, mumbling as if in a dream. The film overflows with performance scenes in which Chalamet captures Dylan’s controlled erraticism, singing in a way that spins folk conventions into a galactic spiral of feeling. The real-life Dylan of the 1960s was a bit lighter and funnier than the solemn figure Chalamet cuts, but his prankster soul flashes through occasionally, such as when he announces himself to be God and then breaks into a grin. And though Dylan himself had some input in the movie, Chalamet doesn’t dull the artist’s cruel edge; at one point, with glassy anger in his eyes, he tells Baez her songs are pretty like paintings in a dentist’s office.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie has that same antiseptic quality that Dylan stood against. New York looks as stagey and cheerful as an amusement park. Dylan’s romance with Sylvie Russo—a fictionalized version of his real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo, played by Elle Fanning—mostly seems to exist to give trivia about Dylan’s love songs. Historical giants are sketched in 2-D: Ed Norton’s Seeger is a gentle idealist with a hint of cunning; Monica Barbaro’s Baez is all confidence except for when she’s all insecurity. Most irritating are the groan-worthy winks to the audience. “Be careful on that thing!” Seeger admonishes as Dylan rides his motorcycle, a few years before the singer’s career-altering, still-mysterious crash of 1966.
Thanks to Chalamet’s performance, the film’s hokiness isn’t totally fatal to the viewing experience. But if A Complete Unknown is Hollywood’s grand, Oscar-baiting summation of Dylan’s legacy, then the implication is sad: Even when trying to celebrate originality, the entertainment industry insists on predictability. The film need not be an art-house riddle—Todd Haynes already took that approach to Dylan in 2007 with I’m Not There—but a shaggier, more naturalistic version would have better suited its subject. The film does convey one true idea, at least: Worshipping an artist is different from listening to what they have to say.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted, S. Carniani, JADES Collaboration
Day 25 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the most distant known galaxy. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking distant galaxy observed just 290 million years after the Big Bang. In October 2023 and January 2024, an international team of astronomers used Webb to observe galaxies as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program, obtaining a spectrum of the record-breaking galaxy featured in this image, highlighted by the small square at center, surrounded by an ocean of thousands of other galaxies.
“Silent Night” is one of the most popular Christmas hymns, often sung in churches lit only by candles. The song describes a “tender and mild” infant Christ slumbering undisturbed in “heavenly peace.” Another beloved hymn, “Away in a Manger,” also focuses on the theme of divine serenity: It speaks of animals making noises but the child Christ being different. “The cattle are lowing,” goes one verse. “The baby awakes / But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Countless paintings hang in museums showing the manger scene as peaceful, with Mary gazing beatifically at her calm, still baby.
I bear no particular grudge against seekers of peace, nor do I desire to play the Scrooge around visions of Jesus that bring people joy. Nonetheless, I can’t help but notice that these depictions of Jesus’s first nights with his parents stand in stark contrast to most children’s early days.
“Silent Night” depictions of Christ’s birth are unrealistic, as plastic as decorations that appear on lawns every December, as staged as the declarations of love at the end of a Hallmark Christmas movie. And these versions of the Nativity miss something essential: the humanity of Jesus.
Though neither of the Gospel accounts of Christ’s birth describes him crying, the Gospel of Luke says that Jesus “grew up,” which implies that he went through the typical stages of development. As an adult, he experienced a normal range of emotions: He wept at the death of a friend (John 11:35), experienced fatigue after a long day of travel (John 4:6), and was anguished at the thought of his impending crucifixion (Luke 22:44). The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, looking back over the life of Jesus, says that he was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Based on all this, as a scholar of the New Testament I feel confident that Jesus must have behaved like an ordinary baby.
And as a father, I know how babies behave. My wife and I have four children, and at some point during each birth, I feared for the safety of my wife, the child, or both. These infants’ first moments in the world were anything but serene. They cried and wailed; they peed and pooped. What brought on those tears? Were they cold? Hungry? In need of a new diaper or simply physical touch, to be held and comforted? We didn’t know. I imagine that Mary and Joseph felt a similar disorientation.
The Christmas story is about God becoming a child, but not in the sense that an infant had all the knowledge and power of God squeezed into a baby form. It’s not about divine shape-shifting. It’s about divine limitation, humility, and weakness. A crying, unsettled Jesus who soiled himself like any other baby captures the central miracle that Christmas proposes. For the Christian, God became one of the hungry, cold, dirty, and often-lonely people of the world. He is not detached from us; he is one of us. Once God joined our number, he infused us with fresh dignity. The Church can never rightly turn its attention away from the needy, be they infants or adults, because it worships a God who made himself needy.
Silence might not be the best way to describe that first Christmas, but there is something these hymns get correct. Jesus does not utter actual words. In a world weary of religious speech, Christmas is the celebration of an act. That act is the display of divine vulnerability taking on the complete helplessness of a child. God wraps himself not in strength and power, but in weakness. That idea that true power comes not through the exercise of it, but in setting it aside, seems as unbelievable in the 21st century as it did in the first. Stated differently, most Christians are not ready to take on the full implications of the Christmas story.
Today, many Americans—Christians very much included—believe that strength and power come from money or political influence or military might. That is why, the thinking goes, Christians must cozy up to the presidency and keep some fleeting favored status: to gain protection from the gathering dark. What good can a baby do against enemies foreign and domestic? Of what use is a manger to a Christian nationalist?
The Church has lost its connection to the tears of infants and the moans of adults. Christians are too often little more than another voting bloc caught up in the same struggle for national power as everyone else. Christmas reminds Christians like me that we should set aside our quest for earthly power and instead entrust our future to a God who joined his tears to ours, both in his nativity and later upon the cross.
Our lives and our world are not oceans of calm. There is weeping in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan; at the border; in the city and the countryside. Maybe pondering a frightened Mary, a distressed Joseph, and a crying Jesus will allow us to set aside our own facades. If God was willing to put on weakness, that might free us to recognize our own.
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.
Dear James,
I’m typically quiet and mind my own business. But in recent weeks, I’ve been having conflicts with people over minor things. Just today, I got yelled at twice. I’m not sure if it’s me or them or a phase of the moon.
Early this morning, I was driving in my neighborhood. Visibility was poor because of the long shadows of winter morning. A man dressed in black crossed the street, and I didn’t see him at first. I did stop on time, but I felt an apology was in order, so I lowered my window and said I was sorry. He came over to the car, already screaming at me, and leaned in to continue screaming in my face.
Then this afternoon, I took my dog to our neighborhood park. I often allow the dog some off-leash time, as many of my neighbors do. This time, my dog took off and ran into the yard of a house bordering the park. The house’s owner, who was outside, ran at the dog, yelling, using some choice words. I put the dog on leash, apologized, and quickly left.
In both these instances, I was in the wrong. But I was surprised at the intensity of the reactions. Am I an asshole? Or is everyone about to blow a fuse? Or are these random occurrences, and I’m reading too much into them?
Dear Reader,
Excellent atmosphere in this letter. “The long shadows of winter morning”—right on. And the whole sense of transgression in the second episode, of instability and triggered boundaries: love it.
You definitely don’t sound like an asshole. Assholes cannot write descriptive prose. (That may not actually be true. Good essay topic, though. “Assholes Cannot Write Descriptive Prose: Discuss.”) Also—and less controversially—an asshole has no concept of being in the wrong. Or he does, but he applies it only to the other guy. You, in contrast, are rather haunted by these incidents, and you worry about your role in them.
The day you describe, with its yellings and its psychic abrasions, is the sort of day that can make an occultist out of you. You start thinking about astrology, tarot, vibes, telepathy, the underworld. I do anyway. Is some planet somewhere pulling in the wrong direction, like a truculent mule? Is the mass mind devolving? Am I unwittingly putting out some kind of freaky energy, to elicit this response?
I relate deeply, for what it’s worth, to the dilemma of your rogue dog. My dog, Sonny, is a born crosser of lines and violator of spaces, and we have both been scolded, shamed, and exiled many times. On balance, I think it’s been good for me. (For him too, possibly, but Sonny—being a dog—keeps his counsel.)
I’ve thought a lot about your question: Are these random occurrences? And my considered answer is: It doesn’t matter. Maybe you were a little off, tired, out of sorts. You drove distractedly for a second; your dog moved too fast for you. So what? No harm was done, and in both cases you apologized. Screw that shouty guy in the street, and screw that irritable homeowner and enemy of dogs. Leave them to their little rages and fist-shakings. Leave them to their blood pressure. Do not invest them with the mysterious power of augury.
Raising a glass to rebel canines everywhere,
James
By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Around the world, authoritarians seem to be regaining their strength and daring. In the United States, a political coalition—one that includes people for whom, as my colleague Adam Serwer has memorably written, “the cruelty is the point”—is returning to power. It’s been a tough year for people who believe in liberal democracy. But during the Christmas season, let me make the case for a little faith in the resilience of goodness and justice—and how we can all learn something from Charles Dickens and one of his best-known works, A Christmas Carol.
You don’t need to be a Christian to find solace in A Christmas Carol,because it’s not really a story about Christianity. It’s a story about one man’s bitterness, his regrets, and his repentance. More broadly, it’s about the joy that everyone can find by deciding to be a better person in a world that sometimes feels cold and overwhelming.
The main character of the story is the legendary Dickens character Ebenezer Scrooge, an obnoxious miser who delights in his sneering misanthropy. (Many wonderful actors have played Scrooge in various adaptations, but I especially revereGeorge C. Scott in the 1984 television movie.) Scrooge is a mossy cistern of cold, sour inhumanity. His miserliness isn’t just about hoarding wealth for himself; it’s about the petty vengefulness he takes in denying money to others. When two men come to his office to ask for contributions to alleviate the suffering of the indigent, one of them tells Scrooge that poor people would rather die than go to the workhouses and other nightmarish institutions to which they are consigned. Scrooge responds with calm and undiluted contempt: “If they would rather die,” he says, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
I don’t want to overdraw comparisons to our current politics, but when political leaders are talking about creating mass detention camps in America, and voters—even those who were once undocumented immigrants themselves—approve of such ideas despite the danger to their own family, this kind of Victorian viciousness feels uncomfortably relevant.
Back to Scrooge: What about the people who don’t want his money, the happy souls who are merely living their life and indulging in the joy of the season? Well, he hates them too. When Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, a good and gentle young man, asks his uncle why he deplores Christmas so much, Scrooge sneers:
“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
Scrooge, of course, will soon see the error of his ways. He will realize that despite attaining wealth and privilege, he is angry and unhappy because of a self-loathing that is mostly the result of his own choices. He will eventually beg forgiveness: Every year, I feel tears in my eyes when Scott, as Scrooge in the 1984 film, wipes the snow from an unloved stone in a barren graveyard, sees his own name, and pleads with the spectral Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come for a chance to change.
The real hero of A Christmas Carol,however, is not Scrooge but his long-deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, whose presence in the story is brief but crucial. (He is, after all, mentioned in the famous first line: “Marley was dead: to begin with.”) Marley, in life a pinchpenny recluse like Scrooge, died seven years before the tale begins. When he comes to Scrooge as a frightening apparition on Christmas Eve, he is wrapped in a winding chain attached to now-useless ledgers and cash boxes. He laments to Scrooge that he is forever doomed to wander the Earth among the human beings he so assiduously ignored while making his money.
Scrooge at first resists believing his own eyes, but he finally accepts that he’s talking with a damned soul. For Marley, it is too late, but he hopes to save Scrooge:
“I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”
“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge.
Scrooge, however, doesn’t get it. He is confused by Marley’s damnation, because for him, material success is evidence of a virtuous life. (This is hardly a Victorian conceit: Think of how many people believe this right now.) When Scrooge tries to comfort the ghost, Marley will have none of it:
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
These last three lines chill me, yet encourage me.
Scrooge’s repentance comes after years of a wasted life and a night of trauma and shame. The rest of us, however, don’t have to wait. Each of us, every day and in our own small way, can resolve right now that mankind is our business,that the common welfare is our business,and that charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence are all our business,no matter what we do to fill our days or put food on our table—and no matter whom we voted for.
Americans can’t control much of what’s about to happen in their national politics. Some of the people about to govern the United States may be determined to be conscientious public servants, but others seem convinced that their fellow citizens are, to use the president-elect’s words, “vermin” and “scum.” These people will bring division to our public life. Responding in kind, or acquiescing, or withdrawing entirely and believing in nothing, will all be powerful temptations. Giving in to anger or despair is easier, of course, but such feelings are empty emotional calories that eventually leave people spiritually starved. We might hope that others will change their mind, but the sustainable path is to control what’s in our own heart.
The graveyard scene in the 1984 production of A Christmas Carol was filmed in the town of Shrewsbury, England. The stone marker that Scott’s Scrooge discovers in the snow was left in place, and for 40 years, it’s been a tourist attraction.
Last month, someone vandalized it, smashing it into pieces.
For all I know, the culprits could have been local kids experiencing their first tangle with beer (and the stone has since been repaired), but I found the news dispiriting: It seemed like a perfect comment on our modern age of cynicism and avarice that someone trashed the place where Scrooge found his redemption. Learning of this vandalism was part of why I decided to write about A Christmas Carol today. As heartening as it is to think of Scrooge’s happy repentance, it reminded me that we are better served by heeding Marley’s words—so that we never find ourselves in the snow, staring at our own grave, and wondering whether we still have time to set things right.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime, announced in a Telegram post that its leader has reached a deal with other rebel leaders in its coalition to dissolve all factions and merge them under the defense ministry.
American Airlines resumed service this morning after a brief outage that grounded all planes.
Residents along California’s coast are under high-surf and flooding threats, a day after a major storm.
My family includes a farmer and a fiber artist in rural Kentucky, who rarely miss a Sunday service at their local Baptist church; a retired Jewish banker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; a theater director in Florida; a contractor in Louisville; a lawyer in Boston; and a gay Republican.
Talking about politics at our family gatherings can be like smoking a cigarette at a gas station—there’s a good chance it will make the whole place explode. What’s always impressed me about our big, mixed-up family is not just that we survive Christmas dinner, but also that the family includes several couples who disagree politically with the people they live with every day: their own spouses. They haven’t voted for the same candidate, much less for the same party, in years.
Watch. The protagonists of Babygirl (in theaters) and Black Doves (streaming on Netflix) are stuck in their “perfect” lives—and find illicit fulfillment outside them, Sophie Gilbert writes.
