Cat lives epic success, but aspiring folksinger loses everything.

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2014)

The Coens' Inside Llewyn Davis interweaves two week-long journeys. One is mythic and heroic, the other bathetic but realistic.
We don't recognize the mythic journey till we — with Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) — learn that the runaway cat — who escapes early and against all odds makes it home at the end — is named Ulysses. Earlier Llewyn pondered the poster of The Incredible Journey, a sentimental kids' film about roving pets. This Ulysses's journey stands between the Greek myth and the pop film. The Ulysses myth is like Llewyn's definition of the folk song: "It was never new, and it never gets old."
The sad, bathetic journey is Llewyn's, which deflates all our American Idol myths that all you need is a dream, which if you sacrifice everything for, will pay off. Not here. The Coens love to deflate our culture's mindless delusions. This film flies in the face of every Star is Born fiction we've ever swallowed. Happily, it avoids the happy ending.
Something is missing in Llewyn — like that extra Ell syllable one expects in his name. Llewellyn, now that's a good Welsh moniker. Clearly fate has kicked the Ell out of Llewyn. He has a dream, an ambition, a good enough voice, a dab hand at finding offbeat and poetic lyrics, and he even has the true artist's inability to get along with normal people.
What's missing? Nothing more than the validity of the American Dream. Most people with a dream, talent, perseverance, in fact don't make it. Indeed, of all the musical talents that pop up in this film the only success is the odd kid with the mouth organ who slips into the background in the last club scene. And who would have predicted success for that atonal rambling nasal freak? Otherwise the film is a parade of failures.
Not just artists have delusions of adequacy. The Gorfeins are a caricature of Village liberals, who will bend over backwards and swallow all kinds of insults to feel connected to An Artist. Elizabeth Hobby (Nancy Blake), the sad harpist whom Llewyn heckles, has Mrs Gorfein's square, dreamy face and braids, but her husband is free from Mr Gorfein's pretences to culture. He avenges his wife's humiliation by beating up Llewyn, then taking her away from "this cesspool." He's no sociologist like Gorfein but he has a clear take on that world.
The free-spirited Jean (Carey Mulligan) spews hatred at Llewyn for knocking her up — but turns out to have slept with the seedy club manager too. Her vicious abuse of Llewyn is self- hatred in disguise. So is the snobbery of Roland Turner (John Goodman), who despite depending on two canes huffs and puffs his superiority at Llewyn till he's found in a heroin stupor on a public toilet floor. That's the guy who sneered at someone committing suicide from the George Washington Bridge instead of the trad Brooklyn.
What's inside Llewyn Davis? The unrealistic optimism his culture has instilled. The only emotional impact he has on an audience is his benumbed father's, unwitting. Llewyn's defeat is so complete that he can't even complete his sell-out, that is, returning to the merchant marine in his father's — and the real, i.e., mythic, Ulysses's — sea faring footsteps. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.