In the movie there is a scene with a back and forth with the lead male character
and the lead female character where he says “There are two kinds of people in this
world, those who divide the world into two kinds of people and (and then she
interrupts him and says) and losers. I
feel that way about the Coen Brothers movies. Either you love them as deeply
meaningful insights into life, or you think they are boring droll. I admit I am in the former category, but I am
open to there being nuance and I think that is the message the movie is trying to send.
The balance of pure integrity and selling out and how difficult it is to find a balance between the
two. It is the story of a folk musician
in the Greenwich Village Scene in the 1960s who is struggling to make it and
his downward spiral into bitterness.
There are so many layers to the movie, some subtle (John Goodman Character
and his driver), some not so subtle, (like when his father defecates after Llewellyn
plays him a song. ). Davis is aghast that
his friend wrote a song that Davis considered beneath him, but it becomes popular
and Llewellyn misses out on the royalties. Its more complex than that but the
irony is obvious and dripping.
For me, there were two scenes that were unbelievably
powerful. One involves when he is leaving a car, and he has to decide whether
to take his cat along with him.
Technically not his cat, but one he had adopted and taken on this road
trip he was on. In that instance, there
was an eternity. Making the harder choice is, (it
would be hard to audition at a club with a cat in tow), or making a necesarry choice to abandon one’s responsibility and leave others
(the cat in this instance) to the hands of fate and the one’s fellow
companions. We often know when we are
faced with that choice, when we have to leave someone or something behind,
knowing it will be hurtful to them, but knowing we can not move forward with
them. We try to rationalize, and it may be necessary, but it doesn’t make the
choice easier or the ramifications less painful. And the choice we make
determines the fate of both for better or worse.
The second scene was on the return trip to New York, from the
road trip, and he sees the exit for his ex-girlfriend and son’s town in Ohio. Again in that moment he has to make a decision
as to whether to get off, to possibly reconnect and become part of a family and
trade in his dream to be a performer.
The choices we make, sometimes to continue on, to not settle, leads to
our destruction. Sometimes complete abdication of our integrity leads to our
destruction as well. Its scenes like this that make me still thinking about the
movie and its depth. The choices are stark in the movie, but in real life, it is not always that obvious.
Side note - The Coen brothers are so good at creating caricatures.
Their portrayal of the New York City upper west side intelligentsia who want their
friends to meet their “folk singer friend” and are overly forgiving no matter
how boorish and ungrateful Davis is, was
spot on. The folk music was nice as well.
A good movie to see, A good movie to dwell on.
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