Review of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) by Temrok9 — 11 Jan 2014

I have a certain opinion about this movie that I think differs from most reviews I 've read(although there was a review by David Kempler that I totally agree with).Well my opinion is that, odd as it seems, by considering the movie a great one and by supporting its greatness with the evidence of the story's moral (the talented artist that goes uncredited forever), you don't really appreciate what this movie is about.I have to admit that while watching it I was not satisfied either with the script or with the way it was filmed, not to mention my aversion towards many of the songs (but I guess this is a matter of taste).However, I keep thinking about the movie three days now and I feel that it haunts me much more than movies I've recently enjoyed a lot while watching.Why is that so? I think Inside Lllewyn Davis is a key to the cinema of Cohen brothers, a movie that enlightens the elements that make their movies special, and these elements, as is usually the case, have to do with a certain philosophy that transcends the movies and their particular stories and instead becomes the real center of their work(as expressed by the way they elaborate every story they touch into a kind of a myth with certain characteristics). To get started, I would say that the first thing to notice is that the cinema of the Cohens is a cinema of ambivalence. Take Inside Llewyn Davis for example: I believe that the way the songs are treated in this movie leaves for the spectator to decide whether they are mediocre or the work of a genius;the way the songs of Llewyn Davis are treated by the people in the movie adds to this ambivalence;we hear that they won't bring money, that he should get back to his duet work, we see people very satisfied with the songs(at the club, for instance)-but they seem to get satisfied with almost anything -and we know that Llewyn believes in the potential of his songs, but not consistently and anyway they are his songs and this is what happens inside him.On the other hand, success could then be counted only in terms of making money, of being commercial,leaving the question of what real art is in suspense.This kind of suspense lies in the heart of the movies of Cohens, I believe.And also, what else lies in the heart of their films, I see clearly here, is that the main character is to be forever damned, forever excluded from the possibility of self fulfilment, no matter how closely he comes to it. Llewyn Davis, no matter how much he strives, has no chance(the guy with the costume that awaits for him is not the Times guy we've been expecting to change his luck but one who wants to beat him up, and for good reasons;the girl he's in love with, although ambivalent towards him, won't ever conclude she's choosing him no matter how much we expect it to be so; when a chance to meet his child comes out of the blue, and we expect him to change direction, he won't take it, and although it might not change anything, his inability to act makes it seem like one more lost chance;and,perhaps most of all, in a moment of stress, he will leave the cat behind, closing his eyes to the begging of the more human of his companions to this road to hell on earth.Llewyn Davis is, in other words, doomed;and he's doomed in the way Barton Fink was(perhaps the character that is closer to him in the Cohen's universe),.

So what's the moral?what do we get from all these?NOTHING as the Hulla-hoop man would say;at the end there is no point and no reason, no nothing except for a certain situation in which the main characters of the movies get lost-and loose themselves-within. Inside Llewyn Davis is the slow torture of a man in a world where he thinks he is someone and he deserves better , when the truth is he's no one and he deserves nothing;like the rest of us.I guess that's the reason the movie haunts me three days now;not the most enjoyable Cohens' movie, I believe, but one of their most successful after all, if we should count success by what a work of art imposes on the spectator as a human being overall. Perception is self centered on its basis and we always forget this but in the greatest moments of cinema the lonely doomed heroes (Polanski's ghost writer and many others, Snake Plissken, John Trent, Gilderoy of Berberian sound studio, just to name a few) tend to remind us of that;and to let us have a glimpse into the human condition naked-the way perhaps madness does-or this can only be a point of view( of mine) and beyond that there lies the valley of everything(and nothing).