Fare Thee Well, Llewyn Davis
On a stage, surrounded by darkness, sits Llewyn Davis. He plays guitar, and sings into a lone microphone. His performance is effortless, entrancing. The camera shifts, showing us his rapt audience — in their faces, we see our own fascination with the singer, his dark brow and plaintive vocals. They do not sip their coffee; they do not tap out their cigarettes’ ash; they do not take their eyes off him. Then the song ends, and the audience goes back to their coffee and cigarettes, and we to our popcorn and soda. Llewyn’s fifteen minutes of fame are over and the movie has barely begun.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is the Coen brothers’ latest epic, this one about a struggling folk musician in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. But it is also about what it means to be an artist, to choose between being a successful careerist and an uncompromising loser, as Llewyn delineates the categories.
When the film begins, Llewyn is struggling to launch a solo career in the wake of his former partner Mike Timlin’s suicide. Homeless, he spends much of the movie asking one friend or another if they have a spare couch to sleep on. What’s more, his neediness is matched by his stubbornness and his general knack for pissing off those close to him.
Llewyn and the film plod forward, away from and relentlessly back into the same unspoken truth: Llewyn is a very good folk singer who’s just not quite good enough. We see him play at a number of venues, from the famous Gaslight Café to his father’s nursing home. Every time that Llewyn breaks into song, though, a trance seems to fall over the on-screen audience. The songs he sings may be simple, but they are also imbued with raw emotion — the product of a lifetime of struggling, and the essence of, I think, good folk music. The film is colored by the sad tone of Llewyn’s songs, as well as by Mike’s tangible absence — the film, desaturated, seems to yearn quietly for color, as Llewyn’s music does for Mike, who (as Llewyn is reminded again and again) was a better man than him, and the key to his success.
And Llewyn desperately needs success, even if he would rather not admit it. His fan base consists of a small number of educated white professionals, such as Mitch and Lillian Gorfein, a Columbia sociology professor and his wife, with whom Llewyn is friends. Llewyn, however, disdains these fans, because they don’t feel the real pain cut under the music. Llewyn’s passion for the music is consuming; the Gorfeins play his record in the living room while sipping wine, chatting with academics before dinner. In one scene, the Gorfeins have invited Llewyn to spend the night in their home. At dinner, they ask him to play a song. He only makes it through about a minute before he stops, incensed that he has been made, in his mind, to play for his meal, which he views as an insult to his art. He tells Mitch that he wouldn’t invite him over and then ask him to “give a lecture on the peoples of Meso-America.”
But Llewyn’s feelings are more complicated than that. Certainly he is insulted at being forced to perform like, as he says, a trained poodle. But he is also upset with his art for having failed him. “I do this for a living,” he tells the Gorfeins, knowing full well that his career has left him a pauper.
Llewyn’s integrity — or stubbornness — has been his downfall. His refusal to play the part of the poodle (cute and entertaining, easily accessible and easily forgotten) has led him to poverty.
Meanwhile, Llewyn sees many of his friends sell out, in one way or another. Early in the movie, we meet his friends John and Jean, a folk musician couple. They are considerably more successful than Llewyn — the couch on which he spends the night is often theirs — in no small part because of their appealing image (a nice bit of casting this: Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, two of the most popular, attractive stars in Hollywood, matched up with the relatively unheralded Oscar Isaac playing Llewyn). As the owner of the Gaslight says, most of the guys come in “because they wanna fuck Jean,” and the rest of them come in “because they wanna fuck Jim.”
John and Jean’s music is accessible and fun, much more so than Llewyn’s. For example, John writes a song titled “Please Mr. Kennedy,” two minutes of mostly nonsensical lyrics and goofy vocal effects. Llewyn, on the other hand, sings songs about women dying in childbirth. To Llewyn’s ear, John and Jean make entertainment; he makes art.
So, then, what is an artist to do? Should he prioritize his work or his wallet? In typical Coen fashion, the movie refuses to provide much of an answer, except for perhaps “choose one and hope for the best.” But perhaps it is more instructive for suggesting that those are the only two choices in the first place — there is no room, the film says, to hedge. There are only sellouts and purists.
This split is played out again and again in the movie. When Llewyn takes a trip to Chicago to visit music producer Bud Grossman, he is accompanied by two men: Roland Turner, a career jazz musician, and Johnny Five, a young actor and Roland’s driver. Roland views music simply as a way to make money for his crippling heroin addiction, whereas Johnny, committed to his art, has resigned himself to a lifetime of servitude under Roland. In one scene, when the three stop to eat, Johnny reads a poem of his. Roland nods perfunctorily before leaving to shoot up in the bathroom: the artist disregarded by the careerist.
For Llewyn, both of these lifestyles are unacceptable. He puts up with the two and leaves them behind as soon as possible, moving onto Bud Grossman, Llewyn’s last hope for success. He envisions, we imagine, something out of a movie — he’ll play for Grossman, who will be so awed by his sheer talent that he’ll offer him a contract then and there. But, alas, Llewyn’s vocals fall on deaf, jaded ears. After a heartrending performance in Grossman’s looming, cathedral-like club, all Bud has to say is one sad (and, sadly, true) phrase: “I don’t see a lot of money here.”
As before, Llewyn’s staunch refusal to compromise his artistic values (to sing something catchier, to clean himself up a little bit, to smile every once in a while even) has led him to failure. He returns to New York dejected and defeated, ready to give up on his music career and reenlist in the merchant marine. Though he may wish his art and his livelihood were separate, they are not. He must abandon the one to pursue the other.
The Coens are fascinated with the tension between making and profiting from art. They themselves have been fortunate enough to be able to do both (although, like Llewyn’s music, their latest film was snubbed by tastemakers — in this case, the Oscars). But they are interested in the consequences of prioritizing one over the other. It appears, though, that neither option is desirable; one leads to frustration and poverty, and the other leads to soullessness.
One is tempted to say that there is some nobility in Llewyn’s suffering and poverty. He may be poor, yes, but at least he has his dignity. And yet, the movie repeatedly refuses to romanticize Llewyn’s situation, let alone his personality. He cajoles his friends into letting him stay on their couch while simultaneously resenting them for their success, and he sleeps with and accidentally impregnates his best friend’s wife. He is stubborn, moody, and misanthropic. And — worst of all, for a musician — he seems to hate his audience, as much for their indifference as for the fact that he needs them. In one scene, while he’s drunkenly humiliating a modest middle-aged woman performing at the Gaslight, the audience begins to hush him, which only inspires him to yell louder. They can’t tell good music from bad, he thinks, and so they need to be told.
Llewyn longs for a world in which his art transcends petty concerns such as money. He longs for a world much like what is presented in the opening shot — him, his guitar, his microphone, and around him, nothing. But life, like the movie, will not let Llewyn simply perform — he must work for it, and he hates being reminded that playing music is his work.
When we see the petty concerns that fill Llewyn’s daily life, the gaps between his performances, we might be more forgiving towards him. It seems almost criminal that a performer that talented would be made to cat-sit for the Gorfeins, told not to curse by his unsympathetic sister, and forced to beg his friends for couch privileges.
Indeed, Llewyn’s homelessness is the film’s other major injustice. The Coens introduce the motif of searching for a home early on, when, while caring for the Gorfeins’ cat, he accidentally lets it run away, presumably back home. It is only later, after the cat is successfully located and returned, that we learn the cat’s name: Ulysses.
The irony, of course, is that while the cat has a home, a place where he is unconditionally accepted and loved, Llewyn does not. In fact, there’s a sad parallel between Llewyn’s homelessness and his lack of success as a musician — he can’t quite find somewhere he belongs, try though he might. And just as he is doomed to rotate through his friends’ couches endlessly, so too is he doomed to shuttle between the same sad nightclubs, playing the same tunes for the same audiences.
The Coens reinforce this notion of recurrence through the movie’s odd, circular structure. After Llewyn’s performance in the first scene, he goes out back behind the cafe, where a mysterious man assaults him. The film then cuts to him waking up in the Gorfeins’ apartment, and we assume it is the next morning. However, in the movie’s last scene, Llewyn returns to the Gaslight, and we are shown the same scene of Llewyn getting beaten in a back alley. We are left wondering whether all we’ve seen has been flashback, and guessing how many times Llewyn has been here before.
And yet, it almost seems as if, after the man has left and Llewyn is left alone and injured, the movie might cut back to the Gorfeins’ apartment, and he might live this wandering week over and over again, forever. This is, of course, not ideal. Llewyn himself says at one point that he has to do more than “just exist.”
Still, for the film’s many tragedies, its desaturated streets, its staunch refusal to let anything good happen to its protagonist, there is a glimmer of optimism. Much of the film is centered on the motif of “farewell.” It is the main refrain of two of Llewyn’s songs (as well as one of Bob Dylan’s, whose surprise appearance towards the end of the film effectively signals that Llewyn’s opening act is over). It is also the word that comes to mind when we think of Llewyn’s partner, Mike Timlin, whose absence sets the tone for the film. We sense that Llewyn has been unable to say farewell to Mike; whenever anyone else brings him up, Llewyn grows unresponsive, or even angry. Clearly, he is still grieving.
But Llewyn is also about to say farewell to his music career. And yet, even when he wants to quit, he always returns to it. His friends always let him stay for another night, if he needs to. And the success of Bob Dylan, an artist if there ever was one, suggests that it’s not all purists who are unlucky — just Llewyn, who will nonetheless continue to make art. What else could he possibly do?
Art, the film suggests, can never be separated from the commercial context in which it is produced. But it can exist independently, for a moment, while Llewyn breathes in, fingers a chord, and plays. The audience becomes not consumers, but listeners, fully invested in his performance, if only until the song ends.
In the final scene, a repeat of the first one, we see Llewyn’s assailant drive off into the night. Llewyn looks after the car, and says “au revoir,” and we know that there will indeed be a next time. This farewell is only temporary.