Llewyn Davis is a jerk.
One of many folk musicians working the cafes and basement bars of Greenwich Village in 1961, Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) is undoubtedly a talented artist. But he’s also a walking catastrophe: irritable, selfish, thoughtless. He sleeps with Jean (Carey Mulligan), girlfriend of his good friend, Jim (Justin Timberlake), impregnates her, and then tries to trick Jim into paying for an abortion. He sees himself as down on his luck, but that’s not entirely true: Opportunities do come his way, but he squanders them through shortsightedness or carelessness. At one point a jazz man (John Goodman) threatens to place a Santeria curse on Llewyn, describing it as: “I do my thing and one day you wake up wondering… ‘Why is nothing going right for me? My life is a big bowl of s—. I don’t remember making this big bowl of s—.’”
The irony: That’s what Llewyn’s life looks like right now. He’s his own curse.
Seeing all of that, it would be easy for an audience to despise Llewyn. But “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013)—written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen—challenges us to offer its irascible protagonist some grace, even while giving you a close-up view of his flaws. After all, even with his outsized personality defects, Llewyn isn’t that different from you and me.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is a winter movie, tracking its protagonist down the snow-crusted streets of New York and Chicago. But Llewyn is also in a metaphorical winter: frozen in place, waiting for a big break that never comes. He’s trying to redefine himself as a solo act after the suicide of his best friend and musical partner, Mike. Over time we realize that Llewyn’s unpleasantness covers a deep well of grief; this doesn’t excuse his behavior, but partially explains it. He tries to move forward, but guilt and sorrow keep him stuck as much as his own self-destructive tendencies.
These themes also make the film a perfect watch for the first week of Lent. What is Lent, if not the long winter before the thaw of spring? What is Lent if not the hard, meandering journey home? Llewyn is transient, moving from couch to couch as he inevitably wears out his welcome. But there are some places to which he always returns—places that, notably, always take him in, even if it’s with great reluctance. Ulysses is namechecked in the film (the Coens, of course, have a known affinity for that story), but Llewyn has more in common with the Prodigal Son.
In Llewyn I see a reflection of the human soul: restless, fumbling towards eternal but frequently getting sidetracked by fleeting desires. I like to think that I treat the people in my life better than Llewyn does (it’s a low bar!), but I can’t deny that I recognize myself in him. I also find myself falling into the same predictable patterns of sin, making the same mistakes again and again, long after I should rightly know better. Like Llewyn—like all of us—I am frequently my own worst enemy.
Lent, to my mind, is about realizing how much we stand in the way of our own salvation. That realization is the first step in making a lasting change. Each Lent we try to remove the chaff from our lives, focusing on what really matters so that when Easter comes we’re ready to greet it. We know that we’ll continue to fail and struggle throughout our lives, but we always try again in the hope that this time it will stick, this time we’ll find the right path and not stray.
Because “Inside Llewyn Davis” is a winter/Lent movie and not a spring/Easter movie, it ends with little resolution. The most cynical read is that Llewyn will remain trapped in this cycle of failure forever, a purgatory of his own design. But the world around him is changing: the entire Greenwich Village folk scene is about to go through a seismic transformation, heralded by a certain curly-haired harmonica-toting figure glimpsed late in the film. (For the curious: “Inside Llewyn Davis” overlaps historically with the first 20 minutes or so of James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown.”) That gives me hope that Llewyn can change, too.
It would be easier to write him off, of course. But I extend to him the same grace that I hope will be offered to me: the hope that our clumsy, rambling steps will eventually lead us home.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is available to rent or buy.
