Inside Llewyn Davis or the absolute Loser

What's happening when you fail your self ?

Inside Llewyn Davis is an absolute masterpiece of cinematography and music directed by the The Coen’s brothers. This movie relates a week of the life of a young singer and guitarist of folksong in the musical world of Greenwich village in 1961. Llewyn Davis played by Oscar Isaac is directly inspired by the folk singer Dave Van Rank (one of the most emblematic figure of the Greenwich Village folk music at the time with Bob Dylan).

Llewyn Davis, the guitar in a hand and a cat in his other arm is meandering in the streets during a very cold winter in New York, searching for some opportunities, searching for the accomplishment of what he wants to be. The character is fighting for gaining his life with his music, for being an artist and being recognized as it :  but he fails. So what’s the point of making a movie about a loser, relating the story about nothing ? This, my friend, is actually a beautiful film of what despair is.

(Official Trailer)

The absurd fight of trying to be someone you’ll never manage to be

Llewyn Davis wants to be an artist and for that he needs to be recognized as it, to have the opportunity of selling his album and start living from his music. But reality is more complicated than that and it’s not enough just to be good, and have a nice voice. The thing is that Llewyn Davis is failing not only in his musician life but in everything which is happening in his life. Everything he is trying to do is a total failure. We could actually rename him as “Mr. Bad Luck who don’t give up”.

The film begins when he finished a set of the song “Hang me Oh Hang me”, he goes out of the bar and meets a weird guy who was waiting for him, we don’t why, we don’t know who he is… But this guy start saying “well you had to open your big mouth you funny boy uh?”, Llewyn confused asks him who he is and then he’s being punched. That’s how the movie begins, that’s how we first meet Llewyn, singing a song in a dark and dirty bar with a very pure voice, and then, 3 minutes later : with a bloody lip after having been putting down by some stranger weirdo in a dark suit. But that’s also how the film ends, with the exactly same scene in the alley, which can make us believe to a return to the present after a flashback of everything we’ve seen. But no, in fact, he goes out after having finished a set of the song “Fare thee well”.

And this, is what Inside Llewyn Davis is about. A lonely guy who, during two hours of film is trying to be recognized as who he wants to be, but who never succeed. And after all his trip, after all he passed through we are all waiting for some happiness or recognition. But no, it doesn’t happen, we go back to the same starting point of him being striked. This is a fable, a nightmare, a week in purgatory, a very dark Groundhog Day. And Llewyn realises that too in the very last scene, when he says a sardonic “au revoir” (good bye) to his assailant. He knows it’s going to happen again. The details may change but he’s still going to end up in that alley with a bloody lip because that’s his fate.

No country for folk man

At not understanding that he will never succeed and trying again and again even if his karma is telling him “please bro, stop it, that’s okay, we will find something else for you”, can we say that he’s walking next to his own existence because he never realizes it ? Actually it is a yes and no, and it depends of the point of view of what is realizing your self.

Do losers are avoiding their surd ? When you’re not succeeding at something you have the feeling, and that’s also what people around you are going to say to you, that you need to give that up, that this is not for you. But what if, THIS is what you want to be ? I think that Inside Llewyn Davis is a beautiful movie of someone who’s doing something he’s not good enough to succeed at, but that he never gives it up, throws it away because he is convinced that this is what he was born to do. Maybe that can sounds stupid but in this case and maybe in a very contradictory way, Llewyn is embracing is failure, is surd. And ironically, he never tries to do something else than what he is particularly good at : failing. That’s what the last scene is showing us when we return to this same alley and Llewyn decides to say his “au revoir” which sounds more to “à bientôt” (see you soon), he decides to embrace his fate of being a loser.

(mister loser)

But if we think that realizing your self is managing to be what you want to be, or even succeeding in life in something that can be recognized by the others, Llewyn Davis is, more than a total loser, passing next to his own existence. We could have this very intimate feeling of meeting Meursault again (in The Stranger of Camus) in some kind of way. Indeed, we are facing a very lonely man who’s walking next to himself, who doesn’t really feel or act as if he was belonging to the common world. When the girl he loves is telling him that she’s pregnant he doesn’t have any reaction, like if the information wasn’t really for him. As Meursault who doesn’t realize that he’s going to die as if the information wasn’t steering to him. There’s this feeling of being not concerned by their own life, their failures, the others… In fact, they do not have home anywhere, they’re always a stranger.

Hell is the others

In fact, Llewyn is fighting for his recognition and for his own definition of what folk music is. But the others do not understand it, and they always pushing him away from where he wants to be defined. Indeed, the movie is also and above all a fight for the definition of what folk music is, what art is. Llewyn is confronted to commercial music which actually is easier to sell. There’s this scene where he is invited by a friend to participate to a recording song “Please Mister Kennedy” which is just an abomination for folk music, and music in general. But it is what is working in the moment, it is what people are buying. And Llewyn is an incorruptible person, he is a purist, he cannot do that and pretending that he is an artist, that he is doing music.

Llewyn is confronted to the others who are more numerous than him and for that, have the power to decide what art, music or folk is. And because he doesn’t have their vision, he is condemned to be a loser, to fail. He is completely incarcerated in a world where he didn’t have any chance to define by himself, and if he wants to be an artist, there’s already an essence that people have built for it.

In fact the movie is about the despairing fight for existing, a despairing existence of a man who’s trying to build his own essence against the others. When Llewyn is in the car and explains to the man next to him that he is a musician and after a moment, tells him that he’s doing folk music, the man said : “Folk Music ? I thought you said you were a musician”. If others are hell is because they do not allow him to defines himself as he wants to. They are taking away from him is surd.