Toward the end of this movie, the protagonist is auditioning for a club owner who tells him that another artist is successful while he isn’t because the other guy connects with the audience. Such a connection was missing for me while watching Inside Llewyn Davis. There wasn’t enough of a story for me to follow and the title character, ably portrayed by Oscar Isaac, was too frustrating to identify with because he’s one of those people who just can’t get out of their own way.
Llewyn Davis is a folk singer in 1961 New York. He was once half of a duo until his partner committed suicide. Now Llewyn is struggling to make it on his own. As the film begins, he’s couch surfing, broke and has a tendency to alienate most people he comes in contact with. He tries to kick start his flagging career but poor decisions, his abrasive personality and plain old bad luck foil his efforts. A cat at one of the apartments he crashes at regularly escapes and he feels compelled to care for it until he can bring it back. A married friend, with whom he’s had a fling, is pregnant and he agrees to help her out despite the fact that she heaps all the blame and an ample helping of scorn upon him. His manager is a well-meaning but incompetent old man, who’s unable to offer Llewyn much help.
Given these difficulties in the City, Llewyn decides to get out of town when he hears about a ride share heading for Chicago. He hopes to get a regular gig at a folk club there but like everything else in his life, this aspiration also comes to nothing. He returns to New York so disillusioned that he plans to go back to sea with the Merchant Marine but even this effort at capitulation is thwarted. Finally he settles back into his old routine and the chain of unfortunate events that define his life starts anew.
What is the viewer meant to take away from this little tale of futility? Is it that some people are beyond help? Are some of us destined for failure no matter how hard we try try to succeed? I don’t know. I’m a huge fan of Joel and Ethan Coen. I know that they love to end their films with ambiguity and uncertainty. If they get it right, I can leave the theater satisfied with not knowing exactly what happened in the end. If they get it wrong, I go home feeling confused and uneasy.
I think what I needed from this film was backstory. What was Llewyn’s life like before his partner’s tragic death? His manager’s secretary gives him a box of the duet’s unsold records at one point so we know they weren’t a big, commercial success but was Llewyn a happier person when his partner was around? Did he have a home? Was he better liked by others or was his life just as sad and ineffectual?
We never find this out. The movie is loosely based on the career of folk singer Dave Van Ronk but this fact doesn’t offer any real answers. The bleak, desaturated look of the film enhances its mood and there are some good cameos by a strong supporting cast that includes Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham and, of course, John Goodman. However, these elements do not make a complete film in my opinion. If this is all that is to be found inside Llewyn Davis then I think his story is one that would have been better left untold.
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