The Distancer: Monday, May 18, 2020
DAY 67: Inside Llewyn Davis
Another Monday in the books, folks!
A perpetual quarantine mood
A little wholesomeness to kick this off — some penguins from the Kansas City Zoo visited the town’s art museum. Believe it or not, they have thoughts on Caravaggio and Monet!
A useful tip for those of us who feel like we spend all day staring at pixelated rectangles: Harvard Business Review put together 5 ways to reduce screen time while you’re WFH. (All that said, you should still keep reading this...)
Personally, I’m maxed out on podcasts right now and am unsure if I can squeeze another one into my rotation. BUT if you happen to be in the market, the hilarious comedians Matt Rogers and Joel Kim have started a podcast breaking down an important cultural artifact. That, of course, would be the 2008 MTV reality series “Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search the Next Elle Woods.” It’s available via a Patreon page, and all proceeds are going to benefit the Eviction Defense Network, an LA-based charity that helps tenants defend their rights. (Even if you don’t need any more #content, the cause is still worth supporting!)
CANNES FACT #7: Thought Parasite achieved it this year, the Palme d’Or winner has gone onto win the Academy Award for Best Picture only three times. The other two? 1945’s The Lost Weekend and 1953’s Marty.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 67: Inside Llewyn Davis (available on Amazon Prime)
I very intentionally positioned Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis as the recommendation to immediately follow Paterson — they make a killer double bill, as I learned last week, of aspiring artists in the Tri-State area (with casting directors that had the good sense to have Adam Driver’s agent on speed dial). The kind of down-and-out musician portrayed by Oscar Isaac in his star-making turn as folk singer Llewyn Davis is far more familiar. He’s a talented performer who always seems on the cusp of a major breakthrough but finds himself thwarted at seemingly every turn.
Much of the discussion about Inside Llewyn Davis when I saw it at Cannes in 2013 (and upon release later that year) centered around a question that’s often raised around the Coen Brothers’ work: are they being mean to their characters? Given the conveyer belt of misfortune that Llewyn seems to be on both personally and professionally, it’s a fair question to raise. Whatever cosmic force governs the universe in the Coens’ films often seems to have it out for the protagonists. Their frequent positioning of the audience at an ironic distance often places us in a position where we’re like a kid with a magnifying glass who, by observing an ant squirm, also inflicts further pain by fixing a beam of light on the creature.
I’ve seen the film a few times now (plus I even read the screenplay — which is absurdly meticulous, as you might expect from the Coens), and I’ve arrived at the conclusion that I don’t think the film is mean-spirited. I think it’s actually quite open-hearted and magnanimous, far more so than some of their more fatalistic works like No Country for Old Men or A Serious Man (if you’re familiar with their formidable back catalogue). A line caught my attention on this most recent rewatch that hadn’t struck me quite as strongly prior: “You don't want to go anywhere,” Llewyn’s spurned ex-lover Jean (a hilarious Carey Mulligan) observes, “and that's why the same shit's going to keep happening to you, because you want it to.”
I say this not to dismiss the nature of tragedy, which can often seem senseless and random. (And the last thing you want to hear when you’re enduring it is, well, that you are somehow to blame for it.) But in the case of Llewyn, I’ve come to understand him as someone hopelessly trapped in the myth of the starving artist that he perpetuates the vicious cycle which keeps him couch-hopping and eternally low on funds. Perhaps it just comes with the territory of the folk music he performs, which pulls from songs of strife developed by laboring (and, in some cases, formerly enslaved) people. Struggle becomes a part of the mythos of authenticity for Llewyn, and his pain-staking efforts to channel the classic roots of the genre just bring him unnecessary pain.
Moreover, he’s blinded himself to the obvious compassion others feel for him — even Jean, who can hilariously work in a way to call Llewyn an asshole in almost every sentence. What they see as a hand to help him out of a pit, he sees as selling out or compromising his integrity in a way that will make all the hardship for nothing. He’s abrasive, often hilariously so, as he lambasts so-called “careerism” and rebuffs offers that might put him on a path towards stability. Yet in spite of the way Llewyn keeps spitting in the face of their kindness, they still continue trying to break him out of his losing streak.
But perhaps Llewyn’s toughest battle is that he can never quite square himself with time. He’s always a smidge too late or a touch too early for anything, never quite aligning with the moment because he’s stuck in a self-defeating cycle. In many ways, he becomes the embodiment of the music he performs. As Llewyn describes, “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it's a folk song.” His tale becomes eternally relevant, both comforting in its familiarity and tragic in its inescapability. Inside Llewyn Davis is a bittersweet taste of artistic gratification pursued and missed that’s made palatable (and, dare I say, enjoyable) the droll wit and preternatural wisdom of the Coens’ humor and subtly hidden heart.
(And look, if absolutely nothing else, you’ll love the music in Inside Llewyn Davis.)
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall