MovieChat Forums > Inside Llewyn Davis (2014) Discussion > REAL EXPLANATION OF THE FILM

REAL EXPLANATION OF THE FILM

posted 11 years ago by Smurgledorf
85 replies | jump to latest

People really haven't grasped what this movie was about. I'll explain.

The movie is about how it feels to be an artist struggling to make "real" art (as opposed to something that he thinks he can sell) with absolutely no idea whether his work will ever be appreciated or translate into a living. Meanwhile success is actually just around the corner, and all his aimless behavior will turn out, in retrospect, to have been heroic struggling against the odds to make something genuine.

The point of the flashback at the end is that Bob Dylan playing at the Gaslight (which wasn't revealed at the start) completely changes how all the other scenes in the film must be understood. Once Dylan became successful in real life, the entire folk scene in NYC got a huge amount of attention. Llewyn might or might not become super-sucessful, but he'd at least be able to make a good living and be lifted out of purgatory. We can safely assume this because the story is actually based on a memoir by Dave Van Ronk, who did indeed achieve subsequent success - the title is a reference to his 1963 album "Inside Dave Van Ronk".

A few notes on specific scenes from the film:

- If Dylan was already big, the Record Exec played by F Murray Abraham would NOT have concluded that he "couldn't see any money here" after hearing him play ultra-serious folk. The ownership of his back catalog would be contested and he would immediately be offered an advance on future recordings, because Bob Dylan would have proved that something like that can translate for a larger audience.

- If Llewyn had succeeded in getting on a ship of the merchant navy, he'd have missed out on the coming folk resurgence and all his struggles would have been for nothing.

- The novelty song about Kennedy sending people into outer space may or may not be a hit, and we're supposed to assume Llewyn refusing royalties is a mistake at the time of the scene - but when "serious" folk music becomes suddenly commercial, having it on his resume would make him look like a for-hire hack and ruin his ability to sell himself as a real artist. Whether a hit or not, Kennedy is going to be assassinated in less than two years and it will seem tasteless and be utterly forgotten.

- Llewyn is NOT as flawed and misguided as he often appears. The reason he's depicted as such is because he actually buys the perception of Jean that he's an a-hole, even though he's totally committed in his desire to make something meaningful when most around him are not. He's sometimes obnoxious, but he also blithely pays for ALL of Jean's abortion (and has done so before with a previous girlfriend) even though she would almost certainly be at least as able to pay for half given that unlike him, she's not literally homeless.

- The flashback also reveals that the man in the bar DID have sex with Jean, which means that Jean is hardly a saint herself, given that she has apparently cheated on her boyfriend with multiple partners. Yet she is by far the most critical of Llewyn in the film - which calls the whole "Llewyn is an a-hole" premise into question: Llewyn actually cares that he lost the cat - he goes to see his dad and doesn't get angry when he reacts to hearing his music by soiling himself. He's not an *beep* at all, he's just not following the same principles as everyone else because he has a Calling that's more important to him than "just existing".

Hope this helps. I'd appreciate bumping, too many people seem to have not grasped the internal logic of this movie and are underrating it as a result, much like they did with A Serious Man. Like that film, it's seem more or less flawless to me, you just need to understand what it's doing.

[–] DaveDiggler 11 years ago

I'm not a music buff and I don't know much about the history of folk music. I do know a little about Boby Dylan and I like his music very much. I know him to be influential, but beyond that? I don't know what impact - if any - he had for folk singers. I have no idea who David Van Rock is.

But I just watched the movie for the third time and here's what I took away from it (just from the movie itself):

Llewelyn Davis will never be famous, successful, rich or anything close to it. That's what the ending tells me. Llewelyn is being knocked down on his ass in a dark cesspool of an alleyway? That's not a success story. The film starts and ends with him being knocked down and beat up. Everything in between? He's being knocked down and beat up by the demands of the industry. He's in a losing battle. I didn't see one iota of hope or future success anywhere in this movie.

Jean clearly has sex with Pappi to get Llewelyn a gig when she knows The Times will be there. She believes in Llewelyn and cares for him. She thinks he's more talented than he actually is. Llewelyn believes he's the same way, but he's singing folk songs that have been around forever. The sad truth is that Llewelyn is unoriginal. He's talented, sure, but not on the level of a Bob Dylan, who has rare talent that transcends the industry.

But back to Jean, I wouldn't cast stones at her Sainthood because it's revealed that she had sex with three people. She had sex with Pappi because, as Llewelyn put it, she was thinking about him. That is a selfless act. And for a woman in that time period... Sexuality was one of the few things they could hold over a male.

Llewelyn has had a long hard journey in a tough industry, but he was ultimately upstaged by Bob Dylan at the end. Someone who's original, new and groundbreaking, which we were clearly meant to see.

I think Llewelyn is flawed, but not misguided. He has a true love for what he does. He busts his ass attempting to make it in the music industry. After he is shot down by Grossman, he realizes that he's never going to make it and he starts looking at reality. At some point you have to give up on your dream and realize that it's just a dream. Some people are Llewelyn Davis and some people are Bob Dylan. It's as simple as that. And that's life.

The cats... I tried to figure out the meaning of the cats during my second viewing. I quickly realized that the meaning was probably so stupid that it wasn't worth my time investing that much thought into it. Could have done without the cats. "Llewelyn is the cat." Really? I didn't think the Coens could possibly be that... Simple.

My only gripe with an otherwise terrific movie.

So tell me, where the fack is Ringo?

[–] pclassic 11 years ago

Great post Dave, well said, and I agree with all of your points, with the possible exception of whether anything happened between Pappi & Jean. We know he claims it did, and obviously Llewyn believes it did. That is what is important, but beyond that, I don't think we can know for sure what happened within the context of the story. Certainly it would not be a stretch for Pappi to make something like that up.

As for the cat, I rather like its inclusion, but I tend to believe that it is a big fat red herring.

We know that the Coens like to tease their audiences (Fargo: This is a True Story) and to me, the presence of the cat in the film is more of the same. The "clues" ..."Llewyn is the cat"..."Explain the cat," the ambiguous roadkill, only seem to reinforce this possibility to me. I don't think it takes away from the story at all, and it allows for those so predisposed, to let their imaginations run wild. Not a bad thing, and part of the charm of the movie, in my opinion.

[–] ppllkk 11 years ago

pclassic wrote:

I don't think [the cat] takes away from the story at all, and it allows for those so predisposed, to let their imaginations run wild.

To paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes a cat is just a cat."

Or to paraphrase Faulkner on The Sound and the Fury , "It was simply a cat which happened to be handy on that date. It was not deliberate."

[–] dextertrax 11 years ago

The meaning of the film seemed pretty clear to me: Many people lived the lifestyle, Dylan's the one that made it into the mainstream. We saw a week in the life of a guy that didn't. That final scene, where he receives a rousing applause inside the gaslight would be forgotten minutes later when people were blown away by a soon-to-emerge Bob Dylan while our 'hero' lay bleeding in the street.

Never tell me the odds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvxwf1jxdaM

[–] adamwarlock 11 years ago

Dylan was making the scene in NYC famous by '61-'62 but nationwide fame didn't come until '63. So Llewyn will need to hang on for another year or more which he might not be able to do.

Ayn Rand-the philosopher of the intellectually bankrupt.

[–] marieve-mac 11 years ago

Ok, I'm jumping on this bandwagon. First, a theory for the circular nature of the film that is confusing everyone vis a vis flashforward/back.

Let's go to that really creepy scene with John Goodman where he talks of his study of the dark arts, and if Llewyn crosses him or hurts him in any way (say, leave him to die in the car in the middle of the night all alone?) then he will come after him in ways Llewyn could never imagine. "Maybe a pain in your side" he suggests. What is Llewyn holding onto after his beating in the alley? There's a beat hit in that conversation of the car that is unnerving. The tone of it. The pacing of Goodman's words. The editing. Everything is unsettling in that moment, in ways that do not match any other of the beats of the film. Everything else is tearing him down, but this moment in the car with Goodman, tell me: who is really in the "driver's seat" so to speak?

Also the name of the cat, Ullysses, suggests a nod to the mythological, as they did with O Brother Where Art Thou, also a musical movie, though that film was blatantly an entire homage to the story of Ulysses, as it was well publicized. (Musical in that the songs are sung by the performers themselves in context of the movie, not as breakaway song and dance numbers, these movies have a 'musical style' quality. But trust me, I get the difference. This isn't Rent.) I saw Don Quiote was also paralleled with this film, and I believe that is the right track.

The Goodman character and the name of the cat suggest to me that there is definitely something existential going on with the looping of the film. Think Beckett (Endgame; Waiting for Godot). Something more familiar might be Kaufman's style of filmmaking (Adaptation; Being John Malkovich). Or Barton Fink, as that was also suggested. These films go beyond your play-by-play scenes, and go into the absurd, the theoretical, the subconscious. Inside Llewyn Davis does the same thing.

A lot of people think us 'theorists' are reading too much into the film, but that's not giving the Coen's due credit. Yes, it is about the struggle of the lowly musician in a thankless world, those thousands who just can't catch a break, hold enough talent to somewhat get by, or get gigs at the very least, but drudge for their entire career from gig to gig. But underneath that story something else is happening, and that's where the mystique of the movie resides. The genius of it: the purgatory. It is a morality play of sorts, where Llewyn creates his own sort of hell (both existentially through his encounter with Goodman, and in reality as with his pregnancy issue with Jean) from which he is likely never to escape. The film is both an analogy and a literal telling of what it is to create your own version of hell.

Second. The pause from Llewyn at the Gaslight as Dylan starts to sing. I didn't see reverence and awe. I DID notice however that Dylan's song starts with similar "fare thee well my darling" lyrics that mirrored the song Llewyn ended his set with, though the Dylan song becomes something else entirely. It was the repetition of the line that Llewyn pauses to hear, mostly, not his awe of the next act on stage. Curiosity about the guy, sure, but we see Llewyn's face on the "Fare thee well" line. It's fare thee well to the passé performer, fare thee well to the 'old' ways of folk, opening by saying goodbye to Llewyn's style of music, au revoir to the audience, etc etc. Take from it what you will.

THIRD! Lastly! A nod to their gem of a joke, when Grossman tells Llewyn to get back together with his partner. He's basically (unknowingly) telling him to go jump off a bridge. "Thanks, that's good advice" says Llewyn, who probably feels like doing just that at that moment. Genius.

[–] BassmanUW826 11 years ago

Actually, I found one of the main points of the film to be that Llewyn Davis just wasn't that good. That he was one of these people in the folk world that opened the door to the Dylans of the world, but it's not like there weren't successful folk musicians before Davis. Pete Seeger, for example. I think everyone was right about him: he could be a solid part of group in harmonies, but not the songwriter he thought he was.

I think this was never more evident than the last scene. I found most of Llewyn Davis's "serious" music somewhat overbearing. It tried too hard to be serious. The song that was consistently viewed as Davis's best was his duet with his former partner Mike Timlin, "Fare Thee Well". Which was VERY similar in meaning to Bob Dylan's "Farewell," the song Dylan sand as Davis was leaving the Gaslight to meet the man in the suit. Yet, on any sort of objective level, "Farewell", which is an adaptation of the Irish Folk Song "The Leaving of Liverpool", is a far superior song.

Even with the different view of the movie, I loved it as well, just viewing it more as a story of a young man being forced to hit that breaking point where he has to either admit that he is not that good in his chosen path and do something else with his life, or deny that fact and continue to trudge through existence failing at his chosen path.

[–] Doje 11 years ago

Really interesting interpretation, especially about how Llewyn was less of an a-hole than people have seen.

I think with movies, particularly this one, you can read whatever you want and as long as they make sense then all power to you.

I saw this as a piece about someone who makes the same mistakes over and over again and is unable to break the cycle. For me Llewyn is going through a period of disconnection with the world following his friend's suicide. He feels free to screw people over, squander his money, heckle people from the audience because he's disconnected from reality.

Also his devotion to his art is more a defence mechanism for not being successful or trying anything different rather than some form of martyrdom. He could have joined the merchant navy and continued his music career, like the army guy from earlier in the film, however he's not willing to put in the effort to do so.

The 'flashback' scene for me wasn't a flashback, it was like deja vu, Llewyn is trapped in his own cycle and can't break it no matter how much evidence there is that he should quit.

The ending is deliberately open, I'm going to cop out here and say that it ends at a point of two (or more) divergent universes. There's the Llewyn who quits music entirely after finally admitting he's failed or there's the Llewyn who made a career for himself after Bob Dylan's success.

Really interesting interpretation Smurgledorf, I'll think about that the next time I watch the film.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] 11 years ago

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[–] usernumber655321 10 years ago

I appreciate any sort of analysis of this film, as I love it dearly, however I am not on board with some of what you say. To say the movie is "about how it feels to be an artist" is to chop its head off. I don't think the Coens are so pretentious as to think they can (moreover, would want to) teach us about what being a "REAL" artist feels like. Its like saying 'Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man' is about what it feels like to be a REAL artist as a young man (hello reference to Joyce!).
Nor do I agree with the assumption that some door of easy success is about to be opened by the Dylan surrogate. Hearing 'Dylan' simply underlines the ironic melancholy that is the heart of the film. I can't say that your interpretation is wrong, but it certainly isn't the only correct one (as you insinuate). As others have said; Dylan was an exception. He didn't open any doors but his own.
I also dont agree with your interpretation of Jean sleeping with the guy to get Llewyn a gig as somehow making her "unsaintly", or less saintly. If anything, it is a selfless act. Arguably, Sainthood defined.

I do agree about Llewyn being empathetic, but I can't help but assume that any good film maker approaches any and all of their characters as redeemable. We start with the unstated rule that everybody is just somebody dealing with life.

What was most disappointing to me about your initial post (given the thread's title) is that you don't even mention the suicide of his former partner. This LOOMS heavily over the entire film. When you mention many not grasping the film, but then neglect to bring that up, it makes me suspect of your own grasp.

[–] 10 years ago

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