#*inside llewyn davis

[sonnywortzik]

seasonal aesthetic

[sonnywortzik]

the most concisely effective moment in inside llewyn davis is the shot near the beginning at the gaslight when jim and jean and troy are on stage singing 500 miles and they reach the chorus and the rest of the club starts singing along and llewyn is visibly surprised, looks around, and then just looks back to the front and down for a second, as he’s ostensibly the only one not singing along.

that scene shows us better than any other sequence in the movie how unaware he is of his surroundings and relationships with people/how skewed his perception has become. it’s the same scene where he watches troy’s overwhelmingly boring performance but appears to be the only person there who realizes how boring it is, who remains unmoved. he asks jim what he thinks of troy and jim calls troy a “wonderful performer” and llewyn says “really?” with genuine surprise and confusion. and then proceeds to ask if troy has “higher function”. troy is supposedly, judging by everyone else’s reaction to him (including the music producer/manager guy later on in chicago), this really likable guy that reaches out to and connects with people and llewyn is consistently the only person in the movie who’s like “seriously what the fuck is so great about troy nelson”. this can be interpreted either as llewyn being the only person honest enough to admit how lackluster troy is (‘cause like. c’mon. the dude’s performance was boring as shit) or as an unreliable narrator situation wherein maybe troy actually is really great but llewyn is just incapable of relating to it because troy’s style of interacting with the world is the polar opposite of llewyn’s.

it’s also the scene where troy is like “there’s someone special in the audience who i wanna play with” etc. and llewyn automatically assumes that troy is referring to him and gets all irritated and says “i don’t have my guitar” before troy invites jim and jean onstage instead. which llewyn, again, seems genuinely surprised by. and some people simply read that as llewyn being a ginormously self centered prick who overestimates his own popularity, but i’ve said before: llewyn’s an asshole, but i don’t think he’s that kind of asshole. i don’t think he walks around assuming people think he’s hot shit. i don’t read llewyn as “arrogant”. arrogance requires an inflated ego, and i don’t think llewyn likes himself enough for that to be the case.

i also don’t think llewyn is so delusional as to believe he’s dramatically more respected than he actually is. people know he’s good. troy mentioned having heard llewyn’s music and liking it. llewyn thinking troy was about to invite him on stage instead of jim and jean isn’t altogether irrational. just the way llewyn dealt with it was presumptuous and negative, and a petulant defense mechanism, as troy inviting him on stage would mean that troy wanted to harmonize with him and llewyn has a specific aversion to harmonizing with anyone since mike died.

so when everyone else in the club starts singing along to 500 miles and llewyn is surprised and isolated amid this crowd of people, it’s the perfect illustration of him being out of step with the very culture that he has largely dedicated his life to. it doesn’t even occur to him to sing along, that doing so might feel good. that this is a community. he has stopped participating.

which is also just. such an apt metaphor for depression, isn’t it? the inherent self centeredness of depression, how, by its very nature, depression cuts you off from the people around you, even (especially?) the people that logically you should feel the most attuned to. the isolation within a crowd. the sense of all connection stopping at your skin.

and finally: the fact that llewyn’s life is precisely the kind of life folk songs are written about. he is the weary traveler, the survivor, the starving artist, the disenfranchised, the rolling stone. all of those things are more poetic to write about than to experience. rich in fiction but spare in reality, difficult to actually live day to fucking day. his fucking life is a folk song but he’s too close to it, too inside of it, to see it. to see the irony and get the “cosmic joke”, as oscar isaac calls it.

 in that scene at the gaslight he’s too close to the song to sing it, and too far away from other people to sing along to anything.

[sonnywortzik]

“i was young when i left home”

Llewyn dreams of Ohio. Sees a little boy with dark hair and dark eyes, and the boy asks questions his mom won’t give straight answers to, and the boy has a mean streak, and the boy doesn’t know how to play guitar. And the boy is better off.

The highway was dark. By the time he saw the Akron exit it was too late. 

(This excuse is so frail he only considers it once before pretending it hadn’t occurred to him.)

The highway was dark. It wouldn’t be fair to the guy who picked him up

No. Redo.

The highway was dark, and cold, really cold, and

Fuck. Again.

The sky was...no. The highway was dark, and

...

The highway was dark and he didn’t want a kid. The highway was dark and he didn’t like Diane much. The highway was dark and he had nothing to offer. The highway was dark and he got scared.

The highway was dark and for as long as he could remember he had an idea of what he was, or what he wanted to be. More, what he didn’t want to be. Clerk. Factory worker. Square. Father. Not with some fucking apparition of his own pop crumpled in the corner of every room that housed another of Llewyn’s failures: a friend’s couch with no blanket, a box of bullshit he didn’t want. The merchant marines always waiting with a sea ready to swallow him up. “Father” sure as fuck wasn’t in the cards when Mike was alive, when things weren’t great but they were steady, and he didn’t feel like his head was wrapped in wool. 

“come on up to the house”

Now the only living person he loved without being obligated to love was Jean, and she was so pissed about loving him back that she had to verbally shit in his heart whenever they were alone together. If he’d met her before she’d met Jim, before Llewyn had met Mike, maybe New York would look different. Maybe he’d be under his own roof.

But he doesn’t wish for anything, really. And he refuses to wish he hadn’t met Mike.

Instead he thinks about bridges on fire.

“ain’t that lonely yet”

Mike used to fuck with him about how dry he was. “None of your jokes have punchlines.” “What jokes.” “Everything you say.” “Fuck off.” Barest wince of a smile.

God. Mikey was the only one who ever got it. 

“au revoir”

He’s sitting in an alley in winter letting his face swell, poking his tongue around his mouth looking for blood, when he starts laughing for what feels like the first time all winter. Really laughing, shaking with it, jostling most likely broken ribs and stretching the skin on his face that’s already going a pale purple. And it feels like something inside is stabbing him, and Llewyn laughs harder. He just got beat up by a cowboy in a goddamn alley, and he can’t help but think that sounds like a song. 

[sonnywortzik]

come on up to the house. music for llewyn davis, come spring.

blame it on cain [demo] — elvis costello graceless — the national rivers and roads — the head and the heart eulogy — patrick wolf he was a friend of mine — willie nelson plain sailing weather — frank turner floating in the forth — frightened rabbit i'm lonely (but i ain't that lonely yet) — the white stripes au revoir (adios) — the front bottoms i and love and you — the avett brothers i was young when i left home — oscar isaac come on up to the house — tom waits

[sonnywortzik]

[from left to right] Dave van Ronk and Paul Clayton playing together at a party in New York City, 1959. Photo by Ray Sullivan.

[sonnywortzik]

inside llewyn davis and whiplash only w/ the musical genres switched

fletcher screams at andrew that’s he’s not strumming his acoustic guitar gently enough

meanwhile llewyn is pretty much the same just more insufferable 

[sonnywortzik]

[insert something about llewyn davis being more immediately off putting, stubborn and almost aggressive by virtue of his non-expression whereas andrew neiman puts off a first impression of being very sweet, reasonably personable, a little naive and potentially a pushover

when in reality llewyn approaches his life too passively w/ a terrible kind of acceptance/detachment and andrew is a tough little fuck with a surprisingly shrewd mean streak who seems incapable of giving up unless someone, like. shoots him maybe

(both have Considerable Egos and are Quite Resilient)]

[sonnywortzik]

if i could make gifs i would 500% make a gifset of inside llewyn davis/whiplash parallels, featuring

panicked running down stairwells

immediate family members being dismissive about ur career path

"oh my god. are you kidding me? that shit?"/"really? does he have...higher function?"

response to prolonged verbal abuse (andrew's crying vs. llewyn's dead, dead eyes)

"andrew. you're done."/"i don't see a lot of money here."

violent exhaustion 

"where are your sticks"/"where's your guitar"

terrible dinner conversation

"FUCK YOU JOHNNY UTAH TURN MY PAGES BITCH"/"would that cane fit all the way up your ass? or would a little bit stay sticking out?"

Being A Dipshit Talking To A Woman About The Future Inside A Cafe