Review of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) by Clarisesamuels — 06 Apr 2014

This film might be better entitled, “Inside the Clinically Depressed Mind of Llewyn Davis.” If the world of music is often overglamorized, Ethan and Joel Coen have gone to great trouble to completely deglamorize it so that just about everyone who participates is a loser. That is, unless you happen to be the one person in the room who wins the lottery, such as the young Bob Dylan, who is briefly depicted at the end of the film as one of the neophyte folksingers who gets a break at the well-known Village nightclub, called the Gaslight Cafe, designed to be a public showcase for new talent back in the 60's. Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg gave readings there, and the Gaslight later metamorphosed into a club for folk music, where many young folk singers got a start.

The swarthy and handsome Oscar Isaac, playing the title role of Llewyn Davis, does a superb job of depicting an angry, frustrated young folk singer who plays the Gaslight but just can't get a break anywhere, even though he briefly captured a recording contract when performing as part of a duo with a partner who later committed suicide. That is where the depression in this movie begins. Going solo, Davis cannot collect royalties on a single recording or attract the attention of a single agent. As a libertine and free-thinker who is self-absorbed and who lives for the moment, he has no spouse, no children, and no place to live. He crashes every night at the homes of friends, including a couple where he seduces his friend's wife (Carey Mulligan) and accidentally gets her pregnant. Because she only wants her husband's child and not Davis's, she requests that Davis pay for her illegal abortion.

The critics had high praise for this film—in terms of making a film depicting someone who constantly makes bad decisions and leads a destructive lifestyle, and who is probably suffering from undiagnosed depression that causes him to explode into foul-mouthed tirades, the Coen brothers have done a good job. But since it is never clarified that this is a profile of mental illness, it becomes an unrelentingly stark and grueling portrayal of a talented young man who is on a hopeless downward spiral. Davis's self-centered and egomaniacal personality is such that he is unable to care about anyone but himself. He can't even be trusted with a cat. Three cats suffer from Davis's sociopathic indifference to the fate of others. There is not a single spark of sunshine in this man's life. His friends are at best friendly rivals. The woman he impregnated despises him. He is alienated from his sister and his nephew; his father is in a nursing home that is, like everything else in this film, dark, gloomy and joyless. Davis has no real desire to communicate with his father, and just as well, because his father is in the late stages of dementia and merely sits and stares blankly into space. The only sign of life is that his father soils himself while Davis is visiting, as if we needed more proof that everything in Davis's life is malfunctioning.

Davis's finances have also broken down catastrophically. He has no money to buy a proper winter coat or a pair of boots. He is always freezing to death and malnourished. But when well-to-do friends take him in and ask him to play a song at dinner, he erupts in rage for being treated like a trained pony, when clearly he doesn't perform for free; he only performs to “make a living.” His day job was that he once worked as a merchant mariner, and when in desperation he tries to go back to sailing, he is, as always, met with insurmountable obstacles.

I would not want to give away the ending, but there is no ending to give away. The ending starts over at the beginning. There is no redemption to be found here; no lesson to be learned. Except for a few songs that lift this film out of its perpetually bleak Weltanschauung, this story is purely the heavy-handed tale of a tragic hero who has no one to blame but himself.