There’s a moment where I thought the film lost me. Driving on a long, empty road, with one-word-mumbling beat poet Johnny Five (Garret Hedlund) steering beside him and jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) in the back seat punctuating his tedious non sequiturs with short naps, our main character Llewyn struggles in and out of his sleep, unsure of just how long this damn trip will be. Each time the film cut to the road, it seemed to grow longer. It felt like no end was in sight, even if we knew the final destination.
No way the Coen Brothers would lose their pacing like this, I thought. Something is up. This must be a magic trick of sorts.
It’s not until we see Llewyn, playing a rather quietly intense version of “The Death of Queen Jane”, only to be told “I don’t see much money in this”, that we realize what they’re after. They’re allowing us to feel the struggle; the frustration of losing the cat people have trusted you with; the constant need for a couch or money or something to keep you going when your dream alone isn’t enough to sustain you. By the end of the film, Davis, growing weary, is ready to give up. And just as he leaves the nightclub, Bob Dylan is about to play. Folk music is about to have some money to it. He just had no way of knowing.
It’s often said about any Coen Brothers movie that even their minor characters suggest an inner life; they arrive on the scene so fully-formed that even when they don’t say a word, they surely make an impression. This film is no different. From Carey Mulligan’s sweet-voiced but quietly agitated Jean to Justin Timberlake’s happily aloof Jim to the aforementioned John Goodman’s Roland and Hedlund’s Johnny Five – all these characters pop on the screen and keep you smiling, even when the story isn’t exactly a bright spot of sunshine.
This film would make an interesting double feature with their 2009 gem A Serious Man: both films feature men who suffer throughout the film and are aghast at the forces that seem to conspire against them. The difference, however, is that A Serious Man’s Larry Gopnik is a good man while Davis is more than kind of an asshole. Gopnik does his best, providing for his family, being kind to others – even listening to angry parents who want their underachieving teenage students to be given a totally undeserved higher grade. He takes it all in, all these maladies he by no means deserves, and does his best to find answers. Davis, on the other hand, is shown time and time again to be oblivious to the concerns of others. He regularly finds new ways to ask for a couch to sleep on, only showing a slight twinge of guilt. He talks down to the people who try to help him, assuring them they just don’t get what this music is and why it’s important.
In the film, Davis runs into a military boy, Troy Nelson, who gets a music contract. He’s perfectly harmless military man. There’s no edge to him. He’s just a good, wholesome man who wants to play good music for others, another service for the people to partake in after his tour of duty. Davis has no patience for him. It’s people like him, he decides, that take folk away from what it can be. But in A Serious Man, Larry Gopnik doesn’t go blaming people. He goes to three different rabbis looking or answers, and when they ultimately prove unsatisfactory responses, he still does not blame anyone. This is the life he’s been given, he decides, and there’s not much more he can do about it.
So is this a film that celebrates sucking it up and making the best of everything? Of not being an asshole to others because your time may be around the corner? As always, the Coen Brothers don’t explain their films. They stitch these beautiful yarns together and then leave them on the floor, ready for viewing but not for sale. They keep the secrets inside, like the dust that gathers underneath.