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Rating:
Foreword:
Uh, about “Inside Llewyn Davis” directed by the Minneapolis brothers, here are some excerpts gathered here and there over the last five years and reworked into a kind of puzzle for this contribution of mine, born after re-listening to the song I posted in the listening thread a while ago, which brought back the memory of watching the beautiful film a few months ago.
Okay, I'll be brief or at least try to, so:
Once upon a time… the Greenwich Village, the undisputed capital of folk, from which Robert Allen Zimmerman (who will take the stage at the end of the film) would change the history of a certain kind of music.
But this story of ours begins even earlier, when the folk genre is still unknowingly on the eve of its boom, and those who play it (like the protagonist Llewyn Davis) come from the working-class suburbs of the Big Apple and are seeking a life different from that of their parents.
He, LD, is a talented musician, sleeps on anyone's couch, can't make a dime, and seems to be plagued by terrible bad luck, which he is partly responsible for.
Like in a circle, the film opens in an alley and closes in the same alley… but not before melancholically showing us LD's efforts to achieve his share of love and success in life, despite his duo partner jumping off a bridge and uh, a nameless cat adding to his already loser appearance.
The cynical phrase that essentially sums it all up is said by a producer to whom LD plays one of his songs, without even the accompaniment of his inseparable guitar, that is “you can't make money with this stuff”…
The film is inspired by the book “The Mayor of MacDougal Street” released in Italy (after and thanks to the Coen film) with the title “Manhattan Folk Story” (but it's a whole different thing), a semi-biography about New Yorker Dave Van Ronk, singer-songwriter and guitarist, and also a less famous friend and colleague of Bob Dylan, who mentioned in an interview that the character they created, namely Llewyn Davis, is a mix of DVR and other performers who played at the Village in New York around 1961, emphasizing that "the film lacked a real plot, which led us to reflect on this point, and that's why we added the cat”. However, for all those who saw the film, we clarify that it is not about Dave Van Ronk, but it is inspired only by some modified episodes from the aforementioned book, set in the winter of '61, right before the explosion of the folk genre: soon the Greenwich Village would become a permanent circus, with venues open all night long, concerts everywhere, journalists, tourists, curious folks, rivers of alcohol & loads of joints, ça va sans dire. Nevertheless, at that time, unlike the character in the film, Dave Van Ronk was already settled and living with his wife, waiting for the end of winter and foreseeing the change that would transform not only their lives.
During this film's viewing, one is pervaded by a sort of melancholic déjà vu, both referring to the characters and the atmospheres of those years, it feels like we have already lived through it all, perhaps due to books read, other films watched, or above all, many songs listened to over a lifetime (at least this applies to me, even though in '61 I wasn't even 3 years old)… and that's it.
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