Inside Llewyn Davis

As someone who chose a “practical” career path over his actual passions specifically to avoid living like this and yet frequently wonders what could’ve been, I guess I should thank this movie? The knife's edge of living as an artist - the thinnest margin of talent, charisma, or some unknowable combination of the two is all that separates lifelong stardom and luxury and getting your ass beat in an alleyway, stuck in a cyclical cesspool of your own making. The endless stacking of miseries upon Llewyn, so unyielding as to be almost comedic (a "screwball tragedy", as Isaac described it), is believable in no small part because at least some of it is obviously due to him being a prickly asshole. It's a never-ending feedback loop - would he be in this situation if he weren't such an asshole, but would he be such an asshole if he weren't in this situation? As an artist, even just existing is treated like a crime - there's a constant feeling that you're not worth the air you breathe if you're not conventionally "productive". Within a five-minute stretch in the middle, Llewyn is picked on for sleeping on the side of the road, for sitting at a diner too long, and trying to catch a nap on a train station bench. You're not earning your keep, why should you get to take up space like the rest of us? Most every great artist who hits it big has a story that at least starts like Llewyn's - paying your dues on couches and basket-houses, or whatever your version of that is, before your break comes in some form. Your transcendent talent, of course, is self-evident. Here's the story of someone who's merely "good" at what they do. (OK, a bit better than "good" - a couple songs from this soundtrack are legitimately among my favorite folk songs). Llewyn is no Bob Dylan, sure, but does he deserve to be trapped in this hellish Mobius strip of a life while Dylan, treated with an almost religious awe here at the end, lives the life of a legend? Is talent even the relevant attribute? We're shown repeatedly and explicitly that Llewyn's life could be significantly better if he was just a bit less of a dick. We see a week of it - extend that out to a lifetime, and who knows what opportunities he's missed? And yet he's a dick in ways we can pretty much always understand. When he goes off on the nice older couple that lets him crash with them, it's uncalled for, but we understand it's coming from a place of insecurity of his perception as an artist and grief at his former partner's death, which we later find out was a suicide - did he give into the despair that comes from this kind of life? When he condescendingly eschews royalties on a song his friend wrote in favor of an immediate payout, it's because he needs money for an abortion. When he tells his sister to toss out an old box of his things that turns out to have his Merchant Marine documents in it, we understand that a box of old shit was probably hardly the first thing on his mind. Not that we necessarily want to spend time with the guy, but we understand him. Llewyn is obsessed with artistic purity - he looks down on those in his circle who make more practical decisions, who dream of suburban lives. They're just existing. He's the only authentic one. Sure he's got nothing to show for it, no real success, no friends who seem to genuinely like rather than tolerate him. But surely this must lead to some reward, right? Surely if I push the rock far enough uphill, I'll eventually reach the top of the mountain? Maybe if I just play the right club, get myself in front of the right set of eyes. Much of the middle of the film is composed of a dreamlike sojourn into Chicago, where Llewyn hopes to audition for a particular club owner. He's given an audition, he pours his heart and soul into it, and is told it's not good enough. Maybe he'll never get to the top of the mountain. Just another boy down the lost highway. Sidebar: the dinner outburst is the last scene before the road trip section begins, and I love the cut from that confrontation to Llewyn waiting for the car in the rain - almost makes the whole section play like some kind of karmic punishment. The ending, which makes the cyclical, defeating nature of the art life explicit, is one of the best in the Coens' filmography, a lightly surreal, magical realist gesture. It's an inversion of the idea that your characters should learn and grow. Here's a guy who's caught in a cycle that's at least partially of his own making. Who knows how it started, who knows if he was always like this, but now, he's trapped in a purgatory where he's doomed to spin his wheels in perpetuity, and his final smartass comment tells us he's not going to change anytime soon. In every artform out there, for every Bob Dylan, there are likely hundreds of Llewyn Davises. And Jims (who compromise their art for a bit of practical commercial success) or Al Codys (in a similar situation as Llewyn, but not a dick about it yet - on a side note, now that Adam Driver is a big-time leading man, it's funny seeing him pop up here and fill the role of the peripheral-yet-memorable Coens character actor so ably). Maybe they're all trapped in their own purgatories. But if they all gave up, who would make tomorrow's great art? Also, the second Coens film since Barton Fink not to be shot by Roger Deakins, and the first where his absence isn't felt; Bruno Delbonnel is giving this a soft, diffuse, aged look that's perfect for the material and unlike anything in their career up to this point.