Inside Llewyn Davis

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), written and directed by the Coen Brothers, focuses on the New York Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk music environment of the early 1960’s. The title is borrowed from an album by a folk singer of that time, Inside Dave Van Ronk. But this film is not just an homage to that time period. The Coens like to take a topic or genre and put their own imaginative stamp on it. This movie is a sort of mock epic that deals with an antihero looking for a home that is in the past, and so he is alienated from the present and ill-equipped to venture into the future. As Adam Nayman says in his book, The Coen Brothers (with the subtitle - This Book Really Ties the Films Together - humorously alluding to the Dude’s carpet in the Coens’ The Big Lebowski), this work contains “complex observations about ambition, artistry, and aloneness,” and the main character’s “various failures as a friend, lover, and performer.” We can have admiration for Davis’s talent and respect for the purity of his music, and even his disdain for those in the world that have desecrated art solely for commercial gain. But we also judge him for his selfishness and animosity towards others.

The story begins at the Gaslight Cafe in 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, in a breakout acting role, who is a good singer and guitar player, too) strums his guitar and sings the old folk song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.” It is about a man who is sentenced to death, but because Davis sings it, the words take on significance as they relate to his character. The words “Poor boy” repeat often and it talks about traveling “around this world.” It mirrors Davis’s self-pitying concerning his failures and his journey to find the right place for him. But he is never satisfied, so he keeps wandering. The song’s subject has resigned himself to death, an escape from a cruel world, but even that does not give him solace because he can’t abide the thought of being stagnant in the grave for so long. So, he can’t rest in peace, which seems to be Davis’s destiny. After the applause he says they must have heard the song before, and adds “If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” That line sums up Davis’s outlook, which is that the classic songs are timeless, but it also doesn’t leave room for invention.

We find out from a short conversation between Davis and the club owner, Pappi (Max Casella) that Davis had a partner, Mike, which we later discover committed suicide. Pappi tells him there is a “friend” outside asking for him. The man, mostly in the shadows, beats Davis up for heckling his wife during her performance. Davis is a smart-ass even as he is hit by the man, which shows his self-destructive tendencies. It also hints at his elitist attitude about folk music which leads to his scornful behavior toward others who do not meet Davis’s standards. The title of the film sounds like a journalistic expose, but it also suggests that Davis lives “inside” himself, with no real connection with others.

Before he leaves the apartment, Davis plays a track from an album entitled “If We Had Wings,” which he made with Mike which shows aspirations, a desire to reach elevated goals, that, in the duo’s case, weren’t achieved (a possible reference to the Greek myth about Icarus?). There is a shot of the cat that belongs to Mitch (Ethan Phillips) and Lillian Gorfein (Robin Bartlett). Davis has slept at their apartment. We find out much later that the cat’s name is Ulysses, so we have the connection to Homer’s epic (which the Coens also reference as their source for O Brother, Where Art Thou, another mock epic tale). The cat jumps onto Davis and stares at him, and in a way, they are symbolically the same in this story. Ulysses gets locked out of the apartment after he escapes when Davis leaves and the door locks behind them. Like the Greek hero, they are both travelers, trying to find their homes. In fact when Davis leaves a message for Mitch, he says “Llewyn has the cat,” but the woman on the other end of the phone call believes he said, “Llewyn is the cat.” Davis even looks furry, with shaggy hair, beard and mustache. The Coens have said that dogs want to please others, while cats mainly want to please themselves (a generalization with exceptions, since I had a loving cat as a companion), but their statement solidifies Davis as a loner.

Davis finds the cat and takes Ulysses with him to the apartment of Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean (Carey Mulligan). (“Jim and Jean” were the names of an actual folk music duo). They are not home, but Davis knows the super, Nunzio (Ricardo Cordero), who lets him enter their apartment through a fire escape window. So Davis enters with, and like, a cat, climbing into the place. He visits old Mel (Jerry Grayson), his manager, and Mel’s assistant, old Ginny (Sylvia Kauders). It figures that they are elderly, because Davis gravitates toward what is old as he lives in the musical past. He says he didn’t get an advance on his solo album, and needs some royalties, since he has no place to live and doesn't even have a winter coat. He wasn’t successful as a duo with Mike, and he isn’t selling any albums on his own. Mel offers his coat, which Davis rightly guesses is just a “bluff” offer, but when he tries to take the coat, Mel reluctantly offers him forty dollars, which shows how these people are on the fringes of earning a living.

Davis goes back to the apartment where an upset Jean questions him about the cat and is not thrilled with his wanting to stay there for the night. Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) is also there. He is wearing an Army outfit but is staying that night at Jean’s place because he is doing a gig at the Gaslight (he is modeled after folk singer Tom Paxton). His speech is very deliberate, as he pronounces each word distinctly. He is also very accommodating and nice (which is the opposite of Davis), saying that he knows of Davis’s music and has heard good things about him, which Davis rightly doubts. Jean hands Davis a slip of paper that informs him that she is pregnant. They are not the best at communicating orally.

As Troy performs at the club, Jim joins Davis and kisses Jean, showing that he has replaced Davis as her lover. Davis asks Jim what he thinks of Troy, and Jim says he is a wonderful artist. Davis is unconvinced and offers the question, “Does he have a higher purpose?” implying Troy needs to have those “wings,” noted in his album with Mike, to soar as an artist. Davis asks Jim to loan him some money for an abortion because he impregnated another woman (apparently the cat-like Davis may be getting women pregnant as he jumps from one place to another). Davis doesn’t want Jean to know, but Jim says that he can’t get the money without her knowing about it. Davis’s selfish nature uses women for his gratification and then can’t meet his responsibilities as a parent or lover, and has the audacity to ask for abortion money for another woman from the man whose partner he may also have impregnated. 

Davis’s narcissism assumes that Troy is asking him to perform at the end of his solo set, but it is the duo of Jim and Jean he invites to come up on stage. The three of them sing “Five Hundred Miles,” which talks about being far “away from home,” and the audience joins in with the chorus, surprising Davis. It’s as if they are all commenting on Davis’s state of living in temporal and physical exile. In fact Jean looks right at Davis who realizes that the song seems to say that he can’t return to what was between them. But, the crowd singing along also shows people connecting with the performers, something Davis has not been able to establish. 

The next morning Troy is up early, in his Army fatigues, eating cereal. Davis had been relegated to sleeping on the floor, representative of his station in life. Davis asks Troy sarcastically if he is next going to “plug” himself in, like a robot, and follow the commands of his superiors. But Troy is not interested in being a “killing machine,” which is what Davis stereotypes him to be. Troy says he doesn’t even like war toys, and only admires the discipline of the Army. He also has no interest in making a career out of the military. Troy surprises Davis by saying that when his hitch is over the record producer Bud Grossman is interested in representing him, who he describes as a “wonderful” man who is “supportive.” From Davis’s perspective, which is the one we are placed in, people do seem a bit lame in their comments and indiscriminate in their praise. Davis is also envious because he had Mel send his latest recording to Grossman and there hasn’t been any response.

Davis is a careless person who makes mistakes and then tries to clean up his messes without much success. Here he opens the apartment window and allows Ulysses to escape. He runs after him but the cat is gone, which metaphorically means that Davis is also lost in trying to find direction in his life. On a walk with Jean she cements this view of Davis when she angrily says, “everything turns to shit,” that he touches, “like King Midas’s idiot brother.” She is not sure who the father of her child would be, so she has decided to get an abortion because she does not want to have Davis’s baby, and only wants one with Jim. She makes Davis promise to arrange and pay for the procedure. She says he should do all women a favor and wrap himself in condoms and duct tape. He does make a point when he says, “it takes two to tango,” but she is not willing to take any responsibility here. He wants her to leave her window open in case the cat comes back, which she says makes little sense since Ulysses hasn’t lived at her place. Davis says he really feels badly about losing the cat, and she indicates the misalignment of his priorities when she says, “That's what you feel bad about?”

Davis has to keep moving on as he is not welcome anywhere. Now he goes to his sister, Joy (Jeanine Serralles). He selfishly asks about money from the sale of his parents’ home which is meant for them, not him. She suggests that he could rejoin the Merchant Marines, which to him is only “existing.” Joy is upset that he lumps his relatives’ lives in the “just existing” category, which means they are inferior to him. (As to being in the Merchant Marines, being “at sea” usually means someone is lost, and living on a ship is just another way of wandering in the absence of a fixed home in which to reside). He demonstrates his bitterness about his lack of success when he sarcastically says he can’t hang around because the Ed Sullivan Show wants him back for rehearsals and a “champagne reception.” Even though he relishes the classic songs of the past, Davis does not want the box of stuff Joy retrieved from their childhood home. He says that his early recording of a song should not be exposed because it would ruin his “mystique” as a folk artist. He seems to still have aspirations about his career, even though it seems to be dead in the water.

Davis lies to the kind Mitch, saying the cat is at Jim and Jean’s place and he’ll bring it back. Mitch says that Jim has a recording gig for him. Davis goes to the studio and Jim introduces him to Al Cody (Adam Driver in an early role). They are to be the John Glenn Singers, doing a novelty song, “Please, Mr. Kennedy,” about being sent into outer space. It is a silly, commercially oriented recording, well below Davis’s standards, and he is taken aback that Jim wrote this bit of fluff. But Davis needs the cash. The song humorously protests being forced to “blast - off” in a spaceship, but even here we have the theme of traveling or escaping. Davis singing the words gives voice to his plight of being condemned to constantly wander.

The homeless Davis receives his mail at Mel’s, but nobody is sending him any, as Ginny tells him, emphasizing his alienation. Mel and she were cleaning out stuff, and Ginny gives Davis a box filled with copies of his album with Mike. Davis carries it around with him, like an anchor weighing him down to his past failures. He now moves to another couch to sleep on, which is at Cody’s place (or as Jean asks later, “Who won the lottery tonight?”). He finds a similar box at the apartment, only it contains Cody’s album. It appears that less than successful artists have numerous copies of unsold works. 

Jean brings him the small amount of stuff he left at her place. It’s as if everyone he has been associated with is getting rid of his belongings as they attempt to evict him from their lives. She asks him if he even thinks about the future, which is so difficult for him to deal with personally that he asks if she means “flying cars? Hotels on the moon?” He is elitist when he says it’s “careerist,” and it’s “square,” (uncool), and “a little sad” to try to use music as a “blueprint” to plan the future. She tells him “you don’t want to go anywhere. And that’s why all the same shit is gonna keep happening to you, because you want it to.” Her description nails his inability to move forward in his life, and it points to how his snobbish rejection of other artists makes him a masochist as he wallows in his self-imposed misery, which is more than “a little sad.” 

He runs off during their discussion because he sees a cat that looks like Ulysses, and he grabs the animal. He goes to Cody’s place with “Ulysses,” and Cody tells him that there are musicians who are going to Chicago and will give him a ride if he shares paying for gas. Davis doesn’t have any plans to leave New York, but then again, producer Bud Grossman is in Chicago. 

Davis finds out from the doctor (Steve Routman) that he doesn’t owe him any money for Jean’s abortion because another woman he had sex with, Diane, did not terminate her pregnancy. She never told him, and the doctor couldn’t reach Davis to give him a refund since Davis has no permanent address or phone. Davis did not consider that his actions may have consequences beyond his scope, and he has a child out there, and his only knowledge of the offspring is that he is about two years old.

Davis brings the cat to the Gorfeins’ place, and Mitch invites him to dinner. Marty Green (Alex Karpovsky) and Janet Fung (Helen Hong) are also there. There is some upper-class intellectual condescending turning of the tables here as Marty calls Davis “Mitch and Lillian’s folk song friend.” Joe Flom (Bradley Mott) is also among the guests. He is a classical keyboardist, who also teaches piano, which adds to the snobbish feel of the room. Feeling a sense of belittlement, Davis jokingly asks if they have heard of the piano teacher who taught him when he was young, but the overly serious Flom doesn’t get the joke. Lillian asks him to play a song, and Davis’s first response is an ungracious complaint that he’s not a “trained poodle.” But she says that she asked because “singing was a joyous expression of the soul.” But there doesn't seem to be much joy in anything that Davis does. He takes Mitch’s guitar and begins to perform “Five Hundred Miles,” which is a song he sang with Mike. The feelings of hurt surrounding the loss of his partner is evident as Davis becomes angry when Lillian starts to harmonize with him. He lashes out saying he sings for a living, not as part of some “parlor” entertainment. (Nayman points out the “tension between the Platonic idealism” of Lillian’s words about music and Davis’s “bottom-line rejoinder that its main function” is to pay the bills). Davis yells that he wouldn’t ask Mitch to present a history lecture if Davis invited him to dinner (which of course Davis never does, not having money or a place to serve the meal). The upset Lillian runs out, but returns, saying the cat he brought to them isn’t Ulysses. It’s not even a male. She screams at Davis, “Where’s it’s scrotum?” Since the cat has been identified with Davis, the film is metaphorically accusing Davis of acting like a psychologically emasculated man, despite being able to get women pregnant physically.

Davis takes the symbolically castrated feline version of Ulysses with him, and hits the road again when he rides with the two men that Cody mentioned to Chicago. One is the almost wordless young Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), Cody’s friend, and the other is the overly talkative musician Roland Turner (John Goodman), looking like he is one of the Walking Dead, needing two canes to navigate. Turner can out-sarcasm Davis. He is pompous and condescending to the extreme (a look at where Davis is headed?). Davis tells Turner that the name Llewyn is Welsh, and Turner says that he once had Welsh Rarebit that made him severely ill, and wondered if everything from Wales has the same effect. Turner asks about the cat, and Davis says it isn’t his, he just didn’t know what to do with it. Turner savagely comments “did you bring your dick with you, too.” It is a funny line, but also echoes the inference of Davis’s impotence as a worthy man. 

Davis plays his guitar and sings in the car. Turner is asleep in the back and Johnny looks like he just wants Davis to shut up. So these two are the only captive audience he has at the moment, which isn’t saying much. While Davis drives, Turner talks about how the jazz he plays is so much more sophisticated than folk music. When he finds out that Davis’s partner, Mike, killed himself by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge, Turner is nasty about the kind of music they played as he says he can’t blame him for killing himself if he had to sing “Jimmy Crack Corn” every night. Davis can’t take the abuse any longer and asks if one of the canes will go all the way up Turner’s “ass,’ or will some of it stick out. Turner just spouts harmless threats about how badly he could hurt Davis if he wanted to. Davis asks for a cigarette from Johnny, who says he’s out, but then lights one up along the way. What a joy ride. 

When Johnny finally does talk a little, he recites enigmatic poetry and comments about a play he was in getting closed by the police. We feel some sympathy for him because he’s another damaged, failed artist. In a bathroom at a rest stop, Davis reads some graffiti that asks the pertinent question, not only for him, but for all of us, “What are you doing?” Davis doesn’t look like he has a clue, but then again, the movie may be asking, who does? In another stall, Turner overdoses on heroin, but Johnny says he’ll be okay, which doesn’t sound reassuring. The two men load Turner in the car and drive off. 

They snooze in the car, but a cop stops and says they can’t sleep on the side of the road. Johnny is belligerent and resists the policeman when he asks him to step out of the car. The cop handcuffs Johnny and drives him away. Davis does what he has done in the past. He leaves. Turner is passed out in the back of the car and most likely needs medical attention. Davis looks at the cat who stares back at him, as if wondering if Davis will take her along. He selfishly closes the door on the animal, and in a way slams it shut on himself in terms of a chance at redemption. 

Davis continues his odyssey alone, which fits his antisocial personality, to Chicago and the Gate of Horn theater to find Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). The character is based on Albert Grossman, who helped folk singers become popular. For the purposes of the movie the name Grossman fits in well since it suggests how much money he can “gross” from the music of others. Nayman points out that the name of his club, which is what the real venue was actually called, appropriately fits in with the movie, since it refers to Homer’s The Odyssey. In that epic poem, there were two gates to pass through, one of ivory and one of polished horn. It was a test, and those that were able to pass through the Gate of Horn successfully had something “true” to give to others. 

Grossman says he never received a copy of Davis’s album, which is entitled Inside Llewyn Davis, which suggests revealing the man’s inner soul in songs. We have come to learn, however, that it mirrors the protagonist’s preoccupation with himself and his pursuit of a “higher purpose” that he noted earlier. Grossman asks him to play a song from “inside” him. Typically, Davis plays an old standard, “The Death of Queen Jane.” It is a sad and moving tale of a royal death during childbirth, and is personal, as Nayman points out, since it may suggest that Davis is thinking about the living child and the aborted ones he will never see. But it may also suggest Davis will die before he sees his “children,” that is, his rendition of songs, thrive. Grossman’s cold, capitalistic response is, “I don’t see a lot of money here.” Davis mentions Troy Nelson, and Grossman says he’s good because he connects with people, a quality we know Davis does not possess. Grossman suggests that if Davis stays out of the sun and looks more pale and trims his beard to a goatee, he may fit in with a trio that features two men and a woman, because Davis is not a front man (this could be a reference to the folk legends Peter, Paul, and Mary). Grossman asks if Davis is good with harmonizing. He admits that he once had a partner, and Grossman says he should get back together with him. Of course that is a past that can’t be brought back to the present, which sums up Davis’s life, along with the fact that harmonizing means bonding with another, which Davis has failed to do. 

Davis is on his own once more, hitchhiking in the howling cold of an unforgiving winter. He gets a ride with a young man (Jason Shelton) who he shares the driving with. Davis sees a sign for Akron, Ohio, which is where his son now lives with his mother, Diane. Davis looks like he may stop, but, again, does not make the effort to reach out to another, even if it’s his one child. As it snows, the thumping of the wipers sounds like loud heart beats, menacingly ticking out Davis’s life. It’s dark and the road seems as if it is heading nowhere, also reflecting Davis’s world. A cat that looks like Ulysses crosses the road in front of the car, and Davis slams on the brakes. He sees some blood on the front bumper, and catches a glimpse of a cat behind him limping off the road. He does not try to help the animal. Is it symbolic of his own selfishness which can lead to self-destructiveness? 

Davis decides to give up on his music career and escape back into the Merchant Marines. He visits his father, Hugh (Stan Carp) in a nursing home, and the man seems almost unaware of his son’s presence. As before, there is no appearance of a connection being made. Davis tells him he is shipping out because he wants “to try something new. I mean something old.” These words illustrate his inability to move forward. He sings “The Shoals of Herring,” a lovely song about simple fishermen, which his dad used to like. But, the scene is similar to the one where Davis auditioned for Grossman. It looks as if he has touched his father emotionally by the look on the old man’s face. Instead, we learn he was defecating in his pants. Nayman says the responses of Grossman and the father are “figurative blows to Llewyn’s ego.” 

Davis, like many of the Coens’ characters, suffers existential angst, questioning the point of existence. As Kent Jones says in his essay, “The Sound of Music,” Davis is trying to figure out where he fits in. Jones says that because Mike killed himself, Davis is asking since, “I was once one of two, am I now a half or a whole?” When he returns to his sister’s place, he voices his frustration that what life has to offer in the end is the humiliation that his father now experiences, helplessly soiling himself. 

Davis needs his sailing licenses to ship out, but he again was being irresponsible as he did not want the box that Joy offered him that contained his stuff, including his record albums and the license, which she threw away. Jean allows him to dump his other belongings at her apartment so he doesn’t have to lug them around. She says that he can play a gig at the Gaslight Cafe and make a little cash. He says he is done with performing, but he shows some gratitude for a change, thanking her for trying to help him. He then says he loves her, which is a big gesture on his part, but she isn’t buying it, given who he is, and says, “Come on.” 

He doesn’t have the cash to apply for new licenses. So he decides to play the Gaslight for the money. He goes to the club the night before his gig. There is an Irish quartet singing, and when the owner, Pappi, asks if he likes them, Davis is dismissive as usual, saying he likes their “sweaters.” The crude Pappi isn’t really a lover of folk music as an art form, and wonders if it will pay the rent much longer. He says the audience comes to see Jim and Jean because they want to have sex with them. He then admits that he had sex with Jean, and almost brags that he coerces young female performers to have sex with him if they want to perform at the club. The next act is an older woman named Elizabeth Hobby (Nancy Blake) who actually represents the authenticity that Davis admires. But Davis is drunk and angry at Pappi’s confession, and he ironically mercilessly heckles the genuine Elizabeth. He is thrown out, saying how he hates folk music, which is like admitting he hates himself for striving for that purity he seeks that has become a daunting quest.

The feeling of repetition is evident in Davis’s life as he calls Mitch to stay at the Gorfeins’ place once more for a couple of nights. Mitch again welcomes Davis in, saying his wife is making something to eat, as he did before, and there are dinner guests, as usual. And, Davis is identified, as before, as the folksinger friend. There is talk about the goofy song, “Please, Mr. Kennedy” becoming a hit, but Davis’s artistic dismissal of the song and his need for cash because he is not commercially viable, caused him to take upfront money in lieu of royalties. Another self-imposed missed opportunity. Both Mitch and his wife, Lillian, are forgiving of Davis’s prior nasty outburst, understanding about the loss of Mike. The cat appears, and they tell him that he returned home. The feline Ulysses at least found his way home, as did Homer’s hero. The next morning duplicates the earlier one with Ulysses waking up Davis by sitting on his chest. This time when Davis leaves he makes sure that the cat does not escape. He is at least able to keep Ulysses, if not himself, from straying from the place where he belongs. (To drive home the theme of trying to return home, Davis walks by a movie theater that has the poster for The Incredible Journey, a movie about animals trying to get back home).

What Jean said earlier about “the same shit is gonna keep happening” to Davis comes true in an almost surrealistic manner. Davis is back at the Gaslight Cafe, singing “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” as he did at the beginning of the movie. He even says the same line about folk songs being old but timeless. He then performs the song “If I Had Wings” which was the title track of his album with Mike. It contains the line “fare thee well” in it, like other old folk songs during the film. But he must do it solo now, which adds a raw, sad quality to it, stressing his isolation and unrealized lofty dream of gaining success as a folksinger. 

As with the Gorfeins, Pappi is forgiving of Davis’s drunken heckling of the night before. He says Davis has a friend outside asking for him. Deja vu, right? But this time, before he goes into the alley, a new folksinger is on stage. We hear Bob Dylan using the “fare thee well” line but incorporating it into the new song, “Farewell.” Unlike Davis, Dylan was able to use the old form of the folk song and create something totally new, showing the ability to move beyond the past into the here and now and pave the way on the road to the future.

Behind the club is yet another man in the shadows who is the husband of the woman Davis verbally assaulted the prior night. The exchange is the same as Davis is again sarcastic and he suffers a beating as before. The man says he and his wife are getting out of New York. Nayman notes that when the husband drives off in a cab the man is able to do what Davis can’t, which is to actually go away and start over. The last line of the film which Davis utters is “Au revoir,” which means goodbye, but also “until we meet again.” For Davis, his vicious cycle will keep repeating itself. But the Coens are more like Dylan (who came from Minnesota and is Jewish, like the Coens), as they explore an old place and time, and genre, and transform those elements to fit into their own, new vision. 

The next film is Wild Strawberries.