Merciless Truth

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2015)

This is a story about an average individual. Llewyn is a musician. He is talented, but not too much. He is upset with his companion's (co-singer's) death and absolutely crushed. During the film's time he makes all mistakes a person in such a condition is able to do. So we can see, he is rather far from - not even "ideal" - he is far from even what can be so called "a good fellow". Every chance he could get spectator's sympathy, he loses it (he passes by a curve leading to a city where his child might live whom he never has seen before, he leaves a homeless cat on a road, he insults an amateur- singer who shares the same stage with him and his friends, and so on, and so on, and so on). We see a person full of good intentions but he is very weak and broken to be able to follow them. It is a film about a loser. Llewyn is not like Shakespearean heroes with their deep heroic passions and misfortunes, no, he is just very light, very common, very shallow, and he splashes not in an ocean, he splashes in a bog, and the bog absorbs him. This is a movie about when something wrong can happen it happens. What I dislike in this picture - there is not happy-end at all. Even not a hope. I would prefer protagonist to be reborn after his wrongs, stay and think, organize himself, opened a new truth in his life. But no. He just continues his decline within the movie.
And I felt a vexation about all this situation. I believe that it is what the movie is about mostly. The moral is: When you are in bad condition, you can not act right, all you do is wrong. You can not change anything until turning you into a good condition. So when you are in depression do not try do something until you stop it. Honestly it looks like an educational movie how to discover that your friend is in depression and why it is bad. It is very bad indeed. The worst is that it is a movie about everyone who was at least once in a bad mood and bit his friends', wife's or child's head off. So the film is mercilessly true. Masterpiece but too hard to watch again.
Concerning the acting, directing and music - the movie is perfect. Especially music. It is as good as country music can be, slightly sad and wise, and perfectly performed. So when I am in a mood to mourn over our world (when the world seems unfairly wrong) and nothing can relieve my mind I listen to the 'Inside Llewyn Devis' soundtrack.