MovieChat Forums > Inside Llewyn Davis (2014) Discussion > What is it with the Devil in Movies?

What is it with the Devil in Movies?

posted 10 years ago by agracier-574-436194
7 replies | jump to latest

I just do not get this constantly recurring obsession that so many people seem to have with the devil. I've lost count of how many times in a serious movie - a non-horror/non-supernatural movie - people start to ponder whether this or that or some other dark character is really the devil.

I just absolutely do not understand it. I've read here on the board about ILD, that some posters wonder/think/posit that John Goodman is perhaps the devil.

What gives? Is there some subtle religious fervor going round? Are so many people starting to think like Mulder in the X-Files and see the supernatural all around them?

ILD is a serious movie, a sort of glimpse into the folk scene world of the early 1960s through the eyes of not very successful folk singer who is really down and out on his luck. Where in the world would the devil fit into such a story?

[–] marcjacobspants 10 years ago

Some of that may be carrying over from Barton Fink. But I don't think ILD was a "serious movie" as in a period-drama. Or are you pulling my leg? This was a comedy, a little bit of A Serious Man in it though. I think it was a comedy, a film about karma if you will. The guy can't catch a break, and he deserves not to. His bad luck extends to the people he chooses, his business decisions, and the fact that he has loads of talent and could have been Bob Dylan, except that he isn't.

[–] agracier-574-436194 10 years ago

I'm not pulling anyone's leg. I just don't understand how 21st century people can have an obsession about a fictional supernatural being as if they were living in the 16th century.

[–] marcjacobspants 10 years ago

Well maybe you don't have to think of the Devil so literally, or that everyone who mentions the Devil is using it as a literal physical embodiment. The Devil could be allegorical or metaphorical. I'm not sure what the John Goodman character was in this film but as I said his role in Barton Fink is the subject of much more internet chatter than this one. Some of that may be bleeding over to this film.

[–] Don_Cheech 10 years ago

Good point. Not too sure what John Goodman was all about. Santeria, heroin, abandoning him on a gloomy ass road.
What was the point of his character?

[–] EyeInSky 9 years ago

Most of the Coen catalog features odd seemingly out-of-place characters that come out of left field. Yet, they also seem to add to the whole at the same time. It's like that strange ingredient master chefs put inside their creations.

[–] elephantguns 9 years ago

There are different many levels of consciousness. How many years have you been on this Earth? And the ones who came before and will come after? What makes you so arrogant as to not always question the true nature of things?

[–] agracier-574-436194 9 years ago

Show evidence (scientific, as in empirical, physical evidence) of 'the ones who came before and will come after' and I'll be happy to reconsider my ideas.

But, so far nothing has ever been found, so ... there is no use in reconsidering anything ...