Inside Llewyn Davis
Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coen Brothers is the mournful tale of a folk musician too dedicated to his art to make money, or to accept love when it’s offered him.
It has gorgeous music and performances like watching characters step off the pages of a Joseph Mitchell story; the language is exquisite, but not so much that we don’t believe it. A common view of Inside Llewyn Davis is that it’s a pessimistic film, that its characters are so self-centered and worn down by money and the lack that they cumulatively produce a world of no hope. It’s popular to assert that the Coen Brothers have pitched their tent as the anchor tenants of cinematic melancholia—Fargo’s bleak focus is a family utterly destroyed by financial pressures and the inability to know where or how to ask for help; Barton Fink’s eponymous protagonist finds his dream writing contract ends up a descent into hell: and The Man Who Wasn’t There is finally executed because he doesn’t see the point in defending himself.
Llewyn is an impetuous man in a fickle industry, too out of touch with his own humanity to want to see his own child, and is beaten up for heckling a fellow musician. And so people come out of his film depressed. To which my minority report response is simple: look closer. Inside Llewyn Davis is full of life and second chances and, yes, hope for artists. Llewyn has friends who care, and there are people who get what he does. Who cares if the world isn’t listening? That was never a measure of great art anyway.
Fargo also includes the joy of a female cop who loves the little things and stands against injustice; Barton Fink understands that the creative process is often nightmarish for the creator; The Man Who Wasn’t There is full of wonder at the weirdness of life; True Grit essays the loving bond between surrogate father and daughter; A Serious Man has a rabbi who understands that, after all the questions of complex existentialism, the good life is found in helping others; and The Hudsucker Proxy, Raising Arizona, and O Brother Where Art Thou? most of all are just in love with the idea of life as a comedy.
The Coens know you can’t outrun the mask of comedy, and they know that sometimes, of course, comedy is bleak. But the point of gargoyles is to remind us that sacred and profane coexist: living among angels does not mean being without sorrow. Life isn’t meant to be The Wizard of Oz, all external beauty and fake magic. Real happiness is found from the Inside out.