At the Q
& A session following a screening of Inside
Llewyn Davis, a member of the audience asked lead actor Oscar Isaac
what he thought would ultimately happen to his character, struggling folk
singer Llewyn Davis. Since the movie ends with young Bob Dylan taking the
stage, wouldn’t Dylan’s phenomenal success and transformation of the folk music
scene serve as a rising tide that lifts Llewyn Davis’ leaky boat?
Oscar
Isaac laughed at the very idea. “Llewyn’s stuck on the hamster wheel,” he
said cheerfully, adding that maybe he’d wind up giving guitar lessons in
Greenwich Village.
Nobody
laughed in response. Even the suggestion that a fictional character would fail
to make it in America is, apparently, deflating. It was a tough crowd for a
Coen brothers film.
Because
unlike most other American directors, Joel and Ethan Coen have always been
interested in depicting failure. Their new film Inside Llewyn Davistakes such a steady, unblinking look at
continuous humiliating defeat, it’s hard to see how the film can find an
audience of any size, at least in the USA. Here, we don’t like to think about
failure, though it stares most of us in the face every day.
We’ve
been conditioned to believe in the power of positive thinking. If we can’t
convince ourselves we’re moving Onward and Upward toward success, we’d rather
not contemplate our lives at all. (Eileen
Jones, “Inside ‘Llewyn Davis’: America at its ugliest,” Salon.com)
- - - - -
We're in a Depression. It might be
worthwhile when discussing America to reference it during the '30s and '40s.
That is, while for awhile it was all "a star is born," it eventually
became making heroes out of those in the dustbowl — the forgotten. At that
point, if you wanted to find a hero in America, it was in those who'd had an
apocalypse deposited upon them, and yet were still persisting — that's all, persisting.
They hadn't done much, didn't know much, and weren't about to
accomplish anything — other than procuring even sadder kids. But in their
poverty-stricken faces America found souls to sustain them.
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