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Inside Inside Llewyn Davis
In 2013, Joel and Ethan Coen made Inside Llewyn Davis. I remember when this film came out, but I didn’t pay any attention to it, since I wasn’t as into films as I am now.
But fast forward five years, and I finally watched this masterpiece. (Spoilers going forward!)
This film chronicles a week in the life of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, in perhaps his best performance), a down on his luck folk singer/songwriter. He is technically homeless, as he crashes on different people’s couches every night.
As it turns out, Llewyn kind of brings this upon himself. He puts himself in situations where he has the ability to either do something that will help him in the moment, or something that will help him down the road.
This is Llewyn’s problem: as his friend Jean says to him, he doesn’t worry about his future enough. And this is where the film becomes a lesson. Llewyn comes across many opportunities to either make it in his industry, or to make large amounts of money from one song. But he always makes the wrong choice.
The most notable example of this is when Jean’s husband, Jim, offers Llewyn a featured part in a song that could be a big financial break. But after the recording session, instead of signing a contract that will allow him to make royalties, he instead signs a contract that gives him $200 on the spot. Later on, we learn that the song became immensely popular and that Llewyn would have made a lot of money off of it from royalties. Deep regret is portrayed in his eyes when he finds this out and sees that Jean was right, and that he should have thought more about his future. But since he didn’t do that, he’s stuck in his cycle of not getting any big breaks.
There is a cat that Llewyn comes across in the beginning of the movie that serves as a metaphor for the state of his life. He has the cat in the beginning, when it looks like he has a chance to be on the up and coming track. The cat stays with him until the end of the second act, when it looks like he’s finally ready to take this step. But by the end, when that step doesn’t work out, the cat makes its way back to Llewyn, and we see that because of his decisions, he’s right back where he started.
In fact, the most beautiful way the Coen brothers demonstrate this is by ending the film with the same sequence it opened with. They’re warning the audience of the importance of decision making and looking ahead to your future. If you aren’t careful and don’t take any risks, then you could just be living the same week over and over. They use the story of Llewyn Davis to show what not to do.