Draft - 2

I

E

N

X

S

N

P

O N G of

0 CE and

E R I E

S

N

N

C

C

E

E The Coen Brothers continue to break new ground with Inside Llewyn Davis, a tender

but tough portrait of a beautiful loser BY J O N A T H A N R O M N E Y

18 filmcomment November-December 2013

November-December 2013 filmcomment 19

T HE MOST FAMOUS CAT ASSOCIATED WITH NEW YORK FOLK

music is the one cradled by Bob Dylan on the cover of his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home—but this article

isn't about Dylan, or at least not directly. Another cat appears in the front photo of a more obscure folk LP of the period, peering out of a doorway on the 1963 album Inside Dave Van Ronk. I didn't notice whether there was also a cat on the sleeve of the apocryphal LP Inside Llewyn Davis, featured in the Coen Brothers' film of the same name—a sleeve modeled very closely on Dave Van Ronk's, just as the Coens' singer-guitarist hero is modeled on Van Ronk himself. There's certainly a cat in the film, though, to which Llewyn Davis's fate is closely linked.

The first song heard in Inside Llewyn Davis is a number asso- ciated with Van Ronk (1936-2002), who was an influence on the young Dylan and a linchpin of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Llewyn, played by Oscar Isaac, performs the song one fateful night in 1961 at the (real-life) MacDougal Street venue the Gaslight Café. "Hang me, oh hang me, I'll be dead and gone," sings Isaac in sweet tones less harsh and hobo-gnarly than Van Ronk's own, but still lived in and rugged. "The last words I heard 'em say: won't be long before he dies..." It's a tender, defiant ren- dition, and grimly prescient of what will happen to Davis: he may not actually die, but his story, told in flashback after this number, is a kind of protracted death-to-the-world, the agonized passion of a modern martyr and beleaguered picaresque hero.

OULDN'T MIND THE HANGING, BUT THE LAYING IN

the grave so long," Llewyn sings, and the film suggests that to be seriously committed to

singing folk in New York in 1961—immediately before Dylan's discovery brought the form aboveground—was to submit to something like an anchorite's isolation. Watching Davis singing his ballad in the gray, joyless Gaslight basement is like seeing someone light a compassionate torch in a dungeon. After his opening number in the film, Llewyn mutters: "You probably heard that one before. If it was never new and it never gets old, then it's a folk song." That's what the Coens have created in Inside Llewyn Davis—a bleak but tender story with the direct, timeless honesty of a folk ballad.

It's often assumed that when the Coen Brothers " d o " a par- ticular style or period, mockery is their primary consideration— however affectionate they may be about, say, the stoners and bowling nuts of The Big Lebowski (98), or the Southern country hicks of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (00). You might well expect mockery in a film about the early Sixties folk milieu, long derided as the last word in studious non-chic, despite recent attempts to reclaim it for modish hipsterism. On which front, don't be put off by the fact that Marcus Mumford, of " & Sons" fame, con- tributes to this film's soundtrack; the music, like O Brother's, is overseen by T-Bone Burnett without excessive reverence but with due attention to scholarly authenticity. There are indeed some knowing chuckles to be had in Inside Llewyn Davis about the Village scene's piety, the narcissistic earnestness of certain LP

>> IN FOCUS: Inside Llewyn Davis opens December 6.

sleeves, and in one scene, a farcically bouncy novelty single. Yet Inside Llewyn Davis proves to be the most moving film the

Coens have ever made, the compassion leavened by calm detach- ment and by the cruel irony directed at its hero. It's the story of a great overlooked talent, whose disdainful hubris may well be one reason why he's overlooked. Llewyn is a fixture on the Village folk circuit, playing at "basket houses" where performers would take their cut of a basket passed round for money, and not much at that. He's a hugely gifted and affecting performer, but claims gruffly that it's "just a job," apparently protecting himself from how much he really cares about his craft. He has plenty to protect himself from—not least the fact that younger, blander artists are having more success. Among them are his friends Jim and Jean (Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan), who sing together in a cleanly presentable Peter, Paul and Mary style, and well-scrubbed young soldier Troy Nelson (a hilariously chipper Stark Sands).

Llewyn also has a weight of sorrow to bear. His former singing partner committed suicide, his elderly father is in a care home, and his old girlfriend moved back to Akron following an abor- tion, or so Llewyn thinks. A former merchant seaman ready to ship out again if all else fails, Llewyn has simply engaged with life more than anyone else around him. He may cock a dour eyebrow as eager-beaver Troy sings his song (in fact, Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind"), but we're not invited to sneer at the younger man's fragile crooning, just to recognize the contrast with

what's at stake in Llewyn's bleaker

Inside Llewyn style. The film's alternative title could be Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Only one number in the film is actu- ally comical, the novelty space-race ditty "Please Mr. Kennedy" (a genuine song of the era by The Goldcoast Singers) with a very funny Adam Dri- ver contributing a weirdly hiccuping bass vocal. However, Inside Llewyn Davis is a very funny film—funny in the gazing-into-the-abyss mode of A Serious Man (09), which similarly related the sufferings of a latterday Job. There is no end to the grief piled on Llewyn. His record label is throwing out his LPs; he gets a session gig on a song seemingly fated to be a hit, but he'll miss out on royalties; and he has gotten Jean pregnant, just one more

reason for her to heartily despise him (Carey Mulligan has a great scene, icily demolishing Llewyn in Washington Square Park).

Then there's the cat. It belongs to his friends the Gorfeins, uptown academics whose sofa is one of the many that Llewyn sleeps on throughout the film. Couch surfing was a key part of the folk lifestyle in this period (as witness the early days recounted in Dylan's memoir Chronicles), and Llewyn traverses Manhattan couch by couch rather as Burt Lancaster navigated suburban Los Angeles's pools in The Swimmer. By chance he ends up with the cat on his hands, and suddenly Llewyn has a precious burden—something to

Davis proves to be the most moving film the Coens have ever made, the compassion leavened by calm detach- ment and by the cruel irony directed at its hero.

20 filmcomment Nouember-December zoij

care for other than himself, and that stands in for all the other people be hasn't been able to do right by. As he struggles through the snow on a visit to Chicago, a corduroy jacket his only protec- tion, the cat is the cross he bears. And when he eventually betrays that beast, in an oddly moving episode of his bleak winter jour- ney, he leaves himself wide open for the final cathartic bruising for which he's been cruising all along.

Llewyn is one of the Coens' richest character studies yet—a por- trait of a man who ought to be deeply antipathetic. He's a user, a cynic, a womanizer, claiming not even to respect the art form at which he excels. On the road with a sneering veteran hipstet; played by John Goodman, Davis tosses off a few bars of a jaunty folk ditty, and does it with absolute contempt—for tbe song, his audience, and himself. But deep down, Llewyn is—like tbe Coens' Larry Gopnik— a Serious Man. He's appealing not just for bis charm but for his integrity; like Van Ronk, doomed outsider Phil Ocbs, and so many of their peers, fame and money are the last things he's in the game for. And he's vindicated by bis art, of course: who ever claimed an artist was required to be pleasant, generous, or honest? (Remember the passage in Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home, in which friends from Dylan's Village days complain that he not only bummed couch space but also walked off with their records.)

A SAILOR'S SON FROM QUEENS, LLEWYN IS PERHAPS THE LEAST

absurd, most down-to-earth character ever to bold cen- ter stage in a Coens film—and the sensitively pitched

downbeat realism of Isaac's performance strikes a radically new note in their work. The same realism is there in the film's vividly deglamorized evocation of a gray, inhospitable Manhat- tan shrouded in dullness: the period detail of Jess Gonchor's

design feels dead right, down to the trashcans in the alleys, and the Edinburgh Festival posters and ethnic tchotchkes cluttering the Gorfeins' apartment. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel cov- ers everything with a wintry glaze, highlighting the claustropho- bia—never were building hallways narrower and more enclosing.

But in this drab world, the patented Coen expressionism thrives. Inside Llewyn Davis is the strongest evidence yet of how altogether Dickensian the brothers are in their observation of social types, both realistic and cartoonishly exaggerated. Some of the characters have a touch of the ready-made about tbem: famil- iar Village folk types like Jean the ostensibly virginal hipster queen and her scholarly square-bearded beau (Timberlake, fabulously playing against his image); the squeaky-clean hopeful Troy, des- tined for MOR success. There are the denizens of showbiz in its dustier corridors, like Mel Novikoff (Jerry Grayson), the elderly boss of Llewyn's dilapidated old-school record label, who, with his antique secretary (Sylvia Kauders), could have walked right out of Broadway Danny Rose.

Then—in a stranger, broader register—there are the oddballs from parallel cultural worlds. There are tbe Gorfeins' solemnly artsy friends, into early music. And there are the weird-beards with whom Llewyn hitches a ride to Chicago: Goodman's magisterially splenetic jazz cat Roland Turner (modeled on bluesman/songwriter Doc Pomus), booming jeremiads from tbe back seat, and attended by his laconic actor valet Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund, mocking his own associadon with Beat mythology in last year's On the Road). The Chicago journey is the film's strangest and bleakest pas- sage, a chilly démystification of the romance of the road, with cars passing like ghosts on the winter highway at night.

The film's ultimate grandeur comes from its depiction of failure.

November-December 201 j filmcomment 21

of the richest char- acter studies yet—a por- trait of a man who ought to be deeply

The manifest genius of Llewyn's un- i ^ l e w y n IS apologetically downbeat art makes his defeats all the more poignant. His starkest humiliation comes in Chicago, at a folk mecca named the Gate of Horn, overseen by feared impresario Bud Grossman, played by F. Murray Abraham (the real Gate was run by Albert Grossman, later manager to Dylan, The Band, and others). Reigning a n t i p a t h e t i c . over this vast black hangar bisected by shafts of light, the lofty, sardonic Gross- man is Llewyn's ultimate judge: sitting

in his cramped office, he's as terrifying, and in the same arch- patriarch manner, as the ancient rabbi of A Serious Man. He agrees to give Llewyn a hearing, and the singer gives a stately, heart- breakingly somber rendition of "The Death of Queen Anne," a traditional ballad about doomed childbirth. Grossman's verdict is simple and crushing: "I don't see money here."

This is Llewyn's terrible moment of truth, of absolute rejection by a godlike father figure. More than anything, this sequence recalls the parable "Before the Law" in Kafka's The Trial, about a man who fruitlessly waits for a gatekeeper to admit him to the law—only to learn too late, as he dies and the gate shuts forever; that this portal was intended only for him. Likewise, the Gate of Horn seems to exist only to refuse Llewyn entrance to the temple of earthly success.

More sorrows await him en route back to New York, and on arrival, but the killer blow is reserved for the very end, as the film returns to Llewyn's set at the Gaslight. This is where we came in, and

this time he performs a number he used to sing with his dead part- ner Mike, here named "If I Had Wings." In fact, the song is usu- ally known as "Faretheewell" or "Dink's Song," under which title it was performed both by Van Ronk and by Dylan. After his set, Llewyn is summoned outside to be beaten up in the alley by an angry man with a score to settle—while (spoiler warning for the film's sour punchline), a scrawny-looking youth takes the stage to sing his own number, also called "Farewell." The kid has a raspy voice and a harmonica around his neck. While Llewyn gets a thrashing and a ticket to obscurity, this newcomer is about to be rocketed into myth.

By the end of his story, Llewyn has faced a few truths, been rec- onciled to some sorrows, and had the edge taken off his arrogance. He has, as it were, come home—as suggested ironically by a glimpse of a poster for The Incredible Journey (released in Novem- ber 1963: the Coens are taking some poetic license here), about the Odyssey of two dogs and a cat. (The Gorfeins' cat, it turns out, is named—what else?—Ulysses.) But in life, we don't come home as neatly, or as unscathed, as animals in Disney movies. Davis still has a price to pay, in the form of his beating—and who knows, per- haps it'll be the making of him. As his assailant makes his exit, a bartered Llewyn salutes his departing cab with another "Faretheewell"—a wry, muttered au revoir.

"Au revoir;" mind you, not "adieu": maybe this ending is not Llewyn's final farewell. Perhaps he'll hang up his guitar for good— and perhaps be rediscovered by folk scholars in years to come. Alter- natively, you can imagine him 15 years down the line, turning up on a date or two of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue as an onstage guest, revered by the odd insider but otherwise still forever obscure. D

22 filmcomment November-December 2013

Copyright of Film Comment is the property of Film Society of Lincoln Center and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.