On a Long Journey with Inside Llewyn Davis

Ulysses, the 1922 James Joyce novel takes its title from the Roman name for Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey who took ten years to return home. The idea of an almost endless journey for a frustrated ‘hero’ is not one uncommon to the Coen brothers. Many of their characters do not reach a traditional narrative ending and feel so ingrained in their landscape that they could have been born within it. Tommy Lee Jones’ Ed Tom Bell from No Country For Old Men (2007) being a prime example as the films cuts of mid story suggesting his is one that never ends. The Gopnik family from their underrated A Serious Man (2009) are perpetually dogged by bad luck and the film ends with a continuation of this. There 2000 O Brother Where Art Thou? is loosely based on the Odyssey, with the unlucky trio meeting many interesting characters on  their journey, including the sirens.

The Coens’ most recent and highly acclaimed film, Inside Llewyn Davis (with a cat named Ulysses) employs a cyclical narrative suggesting an unending struggle for the eponymous Llewyn. Llewyn’s journey throughout the film has a sense of timelessness; he even comments at one point that only a couple of days have passed, but it feels like much longer. This sums up the feeling that Inside Llewyn Davis communicates. Llewyn’s life is one so difficult that we would feel sorry for him if he weren’t so responsible for much of his difficulties. That he is a musician, trying to make what he sees as real music against a backdrop of commercialism places his journey again within a timeless setting.

That the Coen brothers show us full song performances goes against what we expect of traditional narrative cinema, but feels necessary for Inside Llewyn Davis as the lyrics provide narrative support and the slow, steady camera supports the sensation of Llewyn’s long journey. This is further brought to life by Bruno Delbonnel’s photography, which presents New York and more specifically Greenwich Village as being trapped in a shade of grey where there is no escape from the cold.

Inside Llewyn Davis is accomplished filmmaking from two men who are perhaps the most accomplished filmmakers working in America and continues a thematic narrative technique of characters, difficult and put-upon in their own unique ways, trying to move their way through life.