MovieChat Forums > Inside Llewyn Davis (2014) Discussion > You all overlooked the main story. Expla...

You all overlooked the main story. Explanation here.

posted 10 years ago by Eraserhead89
25 replies | jump to latest

First of all sorry for my english.
I am surprised that most of people overlooked maybe the main story of the movie. Dealing with death of the partner and finding your own voice. Cat represents Mike.
In first scene he puts on old record which he recorded with Mike. Cat gets out and he must carry it around. He is carrying around cat/Mike all the time whenever he goes. He lost the cat and bring the other one. His emotions to Mike are not in the right place. He didnt deal with his loss. Bud Grossman said to him that he must get together with a partner. He was not a solo act at that point. He still had his partner in his mind. While driving from Bud he saw the bridge where Mike killed himself and then ran over the cat. He had a feeling that he hurt memory of Mike by trying to successed alone. When he gets to Mike's parents house cat is there. Llewyn gave up on music career so his memory of Mike is again there unintact. They told him the name of the cat. At this moment he lets go. The memory of him belongs in Mike's parents house. At the end he doesnt let cat/Mike out of apartment and sing a song that Mike wrote. He doesnt carry him around anymore. He finally accept it. He is a solo act.
Coens are trying to tell that acting one way will get you the same results in life. Thats way there all seem like a loop. But when you learn something this "loop" can get a little different everytime. In this loop he resolves loss of Mike. He still have issues like being a jerk and not connecting with people thinking he is more than others or sleeping with girls that he shouldnt. That explains second pregnancy. That "loop" happened before and he didnt learn enough. Thats why he repeat it. This time around he learned that previous women didnt do a abortion. Now he must know that Jane probably wouldnt do a abortion. This things will be resolved in next "loops".

Story is very complex and its dealing with alot of stuff. I saw movie only once so I am sure I miss things and maybe not explain all cat/mike story right but I am pretty sure that cat represents Llewyn emotions towards Mike. I think I explain meaning of a "loop" right too..

[–] lisasetser0409 10 years ago

OMG!!! You're right! The cat does represent Mike! Thank you!! I would have seen that years ago, when my philosophical brain was a little more in tune!!

A Dog's Life for Me

[–] lisasetser0409 10 years ago

Also, during the drive back from Chicago at night, when he nearly hits something, it looks like an orange cat that runs across the road. Maybe an hallucination?? Mike coming back to haunt him because he left him in the car?

A Dog's Life for Me

[–] lisasetser0409 10 years ago

Also, the cat, as it represents Mike, returning to the Gorfein's on its own, represents Llewyn's "release from guilt" for Mike.

A Dog's Life for Me

[–] DaveBowman2001 10 years ago

I just saw this and it dawned on me. Both opinions are correct. Yes, CATS plural.

If you recall Llewen had the wrong cat in the first half of the movie...after he lost and then found him(well her as we see). He had been carrying around the burden of his dead partner. It's not til his Tirade at dinner, that we realize he had the wrong cat. A female. Llewen had not yet grown his own set of balls, so to speak. He had not fully become a man perhaps and shaken off the guilt, gloom and dependence on his dead partner....nor taking responsibility for himself fully...nor made his own mark. I could go on, but haven't finished thinking all this through..there is a lot to think about here in this movie. I haven't finished my 2nd viewing, but this seems like a turning point in the movie. Later we see him and everyone else in a completely different light. Llewen really is the good guy and maybe it's everyone else who are A%%h0les.

Eventually he comes home from "hundreds of miles" like the lyrics and the movie poster, becomes himself and finds his own voice in the final performance. He completes the incredible journey. Maybe he realizes home is where he belonged the entire time. And hearing Bob Dylan perhaps inspires or reinforces his drive to break his cycle of repeated failure and boredom playing cover songs/making the same mistakes over and over. We don't actually get to see it, but I left the ending with a vibe of positive things to come. A newfound determination perhaps. Whatever level of "success" that is (to be defined by Llewen) and not by his negative "friends and family" who talk him down all the time and beat him up emotionally. I feel like by the end, he grows as a person and a performer and doesn't let his surroundings bring him down. He lives in a cesspool, his sleeping places are "dumps", the clubs are dark, the weather cold and cloudy.

He's transitioning to losing a partner and becoming a solo act on a more simple level. There are all kinds of verbal cues about who the cat is at the time. There is so much more to analyze and I'm just beginning.

[–] krOnicLTD 10 years ago

@thread author: brilliant, mate you just got it absolutely right in my personal opinion. i love this interpretation :)

[–] Kariann1 10 years ago

Very good analysis. When I view this a second time, I'll keep these thoughts in mind. Thank you.

[–] AnoliAtulp 9 years ago

Sorry for my poor English too ;)
Thank you for giving your interpretation. It helped me to dig deeper for at first I thought the film might be just a boring story... not so much anymore.
Anyway there are few aspects I think would be worth thinking over:
Things to consider:
1) the cat is a messenger all right, like a message "please do something different this time, stop, do something good, be a better person, take care of someone". He hits the cat as he didn't turned to Acorn to see his son, he missed that opportunity to do things right way for once. Remember how the rain turns reddish when he looks at the cat running off after the hit? It is as if the rain turned blood for a few seconds.
2) Why do people stare at him when he's holding the cat at the metro? Especially the same guy in glasses? It's like "what are you going to do with him?" question to me.
3) His surprise at the cat's name and then the movie at the theater "The Incredible Journey" - the film is about the long travel and it is raising a question: "can they find their home?". As for the Ulysses, the cat's name. It is a very significant name, from the Homer's Iliad, where the Ulysses is a greek version of the original name Odysseus. I think Cohen brothers might refer to a poem "Ulysses" where there is a bitter monologe of a Ulysses, after Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_%28poem%29
"Homer's Odyssey provides the poem's narrative background: in its eleventh book the prophet Tiresias foretells that Ulysses will return to Ithaca after a difficult voyage, then begin a new, mysterious voyage, and later die a peaceful, "unwarlike" death that comes vaguely "from the sea". At the conclusion of Tennyson's poem, his Ulysses is contemplating undertaking this new voyage.[...] Since Dante's Ulisse has already undertaken this voyage and recounts it in the Inferno, Ulysses' entire monologue can be envisioned as his recollection while situated in Hell."
So it is a story for me of finding home, accepting the situation and making the most of it. Giving up and living in hell, by accepting his faith he becomes trutful to himself and finds his own voice.
As for Bob Dylan someone mentioned in a comment: "How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?"
Let me know what you think, if you don't mind :)

[–] patty1 9 years ago

Anoli, in case you aren't aware, the Coen brothers made an entire film based on Homer's Odyssey:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/reference

All this discussion about the significance of the cat is intriguing, and I can buy that the cat is symbolic, but I still found the movie boring. And btw, I'm exactly from the era in which this movie is set; I was even dubbing an old Tim Buckley LP the other day. So it isn't that I didn't get the folk-scene references, and it certainly isn't because I don't like films that are short on plot. But if there's minimal plot, there has to be a strong character, and I didn't connect with Llewyn Davis at all. I think Oscar Isaac did a fine job, but didn't have much to work with. Similar to L.A. Story, in which I found the highway sign to be the strongest character, this time it was the cat. :-)

[–] rock-golf 9 years ago

Sometimes a cat is just a cat.

[–] vanhalensucks 8 years ago

What a great interpretation