Outside Llewyn Davis
Jan. 29th, 2014 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave Inside Llewyn Davis five stars, and called it "exquisitely sad and funny". I found it the basis for an entirely enjoyable evening on Sunday, meeting S. for an early showing and then going off together to talk about the film, and other things, over pizza; hold fast to that thought, that I did enjoy the film, because it may not be obvious from what follows. BoyBear hated the first forty minutes, after which he went home. Nobody's opinion is binding on anyone else.
It's a comedy: a very black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless, and there's no plot as such, the central character just stumbles through the series of disasters that make up a week of his life, a shaggy cat story. I might have taken against either of these things: I am notoriously unreliable on the subject of comedy, and easily irritated by the assumption that you don't have to worry about character or narrative or any of those things, if only you throw in a few jokes. I can only say that Inside Llewyn Davis got away with it, and some of it actually made me laugh (though I can't now recall what that might have been). Llewyn Davis fouls up at every opportunity, sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes with the worst, refusing ever to think ahead about the consequences of his actions. If he were a more sympathetic character, his misfortunes would be too sad to be funny; if the audience had no sympathy for him, the film would be unwatchable. Oscar Isaac gave a terrific performance, treading this knife edge without faltering. Musically, too, the film was organised to win sympathy for him, both because because his intense, quiet singing and guitar accompaniment showed a vulnerable side to the character and because he played well enough to make you feel he deserved the success he was looking for.
Various reviews around the web suggest that Inside Llewyn Davis is a meditation on artistic success, artistic failure, how far you compromise to win commercial success (or just to make a living), at what point you accept that it's time to let go and move on. I don't entirely buy this: the film is, as I keep on saying, a comedy, and a pretty broad comedy at that. Llewyn Davis is constantly denied the things he wants, but it's hard to see any general application in the misadventures of a character who is beautifully played but too exaggerated to be mistaken for a real person.
Except, of course, that in the discussion around the film he is constantly mistaken for a real character. This is the point at which I have real problems with Inside Llewyn Davis: it's a piece of historical fiction which plays games with the distinction between history and fiction. There is an interesting essay on the movie website by Elijah Wald, who co-authored Dave Van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street "which the Coen Brothers mined for local color and a few scenes" as he puts it. And maybe that is, indeed, all they took from that book, and the identifiable real-life characters came from elsewhere. Llewyn Davis is not a real person; you could not seriously think that this was an actual portrait. But there's no denying that he is also Dave Van Ronk. If the Coen Brothers didn't want people to make that identification, they didn't have to give their movie a title that echoes Van Ronk's album Inside Dave Van Ronk (and give the same title and the same cover design to Llewyn Davis's album). His name may recall Bob Dylan (or more closely Dylan Thomas, and if there is a point to that it escapes me) but his repertoire is Dave Van Ronk* - a slightly less rough-voiced, slightly sweeter version, but identifiably Van Ronk's songs and stylings.
Presumably all the musicians portrayed in the film gave their consent, but the more I think about it, the more uneasy I feel. There's a pleasure in playing a game of spot-the-reference: when Llewyn is told that he can't crash on his friends' sofa because 'Troy' is hitching up from Fort Dix, do you hear the words "Fort Dix, New Jersey" in Tom Paxton's voice? When 'Bud' Grossman tells Llewyn that if he cleans up his image there's a place for him in a trio he's putting together, do you reflect that if Noel Stookey had to use the name Paul to sing with Peter and Mary, it's as well Grossman didn't have to deal with a name like Llewyn? Or do you simply wonder why the Coens felt the need to disguise Al Grossman as 'Bud'? And if so, why do Jim and Jean appear under their real names (especially since Jean is very unsympathetically drawn). Why is Folk City pretending to be the Gaslight (the bar is a giveaway - only Folk City had a liquor licence)?
All very strange. But I enjoyed the music.
*With exceptions. I can't find any evidence in Van Ronk's repertoire of either The Death of Queen Jane or The Shoals of Herring. I can see how The Death of Queen Jane works dramatically: the singer with his mind on the woman who is planning to have an abortion, and the woman he has just learned chose not to, choosing completely the wrong song to audition for the business-minded club manager. But The Shoals of Herring? Llewyn Davis uses it to reach out to his incapacitated father, who had been in the merchant marine. The song is described as Llewyn's party piece as a child, a song his father 'always liked'. As Llewyn says in his onstage patter, it's not new, it'll never be old, it's folk music - but this one is new. Two odd choices, but two great songs well performed.
And, since I'm back on this subject, Jon Boden's version from A Folk Song a Day.
It's a comedy: a very black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless, and there's no plot as such, the central character just stumbles through the series of disasters that make up a week of his life, a shaggy cat story. I might have taken against either of these things: I am notoriously unreliable on the subject of comedy, and easily irritated by the assumption that you don't have to worry about character or narrative or any of those things, if only you throw in a few jokes. I can only say that Inside Llewyn Davis got away with it, and some of it actually made me laugh (though I can't now recall what that might have been). Llewyn Davis fouls up at every opportunity, sometimes with the best of intentions, sometimes with the worst, refusing ever to think ahead about the consequences of his actions. If he were a more sympathetic character, his misfortunes would be too sad to be funny; if the audience had no sympathy for him, the film would be unwatchable. Oscar Isaac gave a terrific performance, treading this knife edge without faltering. Musically, too, the film was organised to win sympathy for him, both because because his intense, quiet singing and guitar accompaniment showed a vulnerable side to the character and because he played well enough to make you feel he deserved the success he was looking for.
Various reviews around the web suggest that Inside Llewyn Davis is a meditation on artistic success, artistic failure, how far you compromise to win commercial success (or just to make a living), at what point you accept that it's time to let go and move on. I don't entirely buy this: the film is, as I keep on saying, a comedy, and a pretty broad comedy at that. Llewyn Davis is constantly denied the things he wants, but it's hard to see any general application in the misadventures of a character who is beautifully played but too exaggerated to be mistaken for a real person.
Except, of course, that in the discussion around the film he is constantly mistaken for a real character. This is the point at which I have real problems with Inside Llewyn Davis: it's a piece of historical fiction which plays games with the distinction between history and fiction. There is an interesting essay on the movie website by Elijah Wald, who co-authored Dave Van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street "which the Coen Brothers mined for local color and a few scenes" as he puts it. And maybe that is, indeed, all they took from that book, and the identifiable real-life characters came from elsewhere. Llewyn Davis is not a real person; you could not seriously think that this was an actual portrait. But there's no denying that he is also Dave Van Ronk. If the Coen Brothers didn't want people to make that identification, they didn't have to give their movie a title that echoes Van Ronk's album Inside Dave Van Ronk (and give the same title and the same cover design to Llewyn Davis's album). His name may recall Bob Dylan (or more closely Dylan Thomas, and if there is a point to that it escapes me) but his repertoire is Dave Van Ronk* - a slightly less rough-voiced, slightly sweeter version, but identifiably Van Ronk's songs and stylings.
Presumably all the musicians portrayed in the film gave their consent, but the more I think about it, the more uneasy I feel. There's a pleasure in playing a game of spot-the-reference: when Llewyn is told that he can't crash on his friends' sofa because 'Troy' is hitching up from Fort Dix, do you hear the words "Fort Dix, New Jersey" in Tom Paxton's voice? When 'Bud' Grossman tells Llewyn that if he cleans up his image there's a place for him in a trio he's putting together, do you reflect that if Noel Stookey had to use the name Paul to sing with Peter and Mary, it's as well Grossman didn't have to deal with a name like Llewyn? Or do you simply wonder why the Coens felt the need to disguise Al Grossman as 'Bud'? And if so, why do Jim and Jean appear under their real names (especially since Jean is very unsympathetically drawn). Why is Folk City pretending to be the Gaslight (the bar is a giveaway - only Folk City had a liquor licence)?
All very strange. But I enjoyed the music.
*With exceptions. I can't find any evidence in Van Ronk's repertoire of either The Death of Queen Jane or The Shoals of Herring. I can see how The Death of Queen Jane works dramatically: the singer with his mind on the woman who is planning to have an abortion, and the woman he has just learned chose not to, choosing completely the wrong song to audition for the business-minded club manager. But The Shoals of Herring? Llewyn Davis uses it to reach out to his incapacitated father, who had been in the merchant marine. The song is described as Llewyn's party piece as a child, a song his father 'always liked'. As Llewyn says in his onstage patter, it's not new, it'll never be old, it's folk music - but this one is new. Two odd choices, but two great songs well performed.
And, since I'm back on this subject, Jon Boden's version from A Folk Song a Day.
