A Folk Singer Failure

 'Inside Llewyn Davis'. A film directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. Starring Oscar Isaac.


     "Success has a thousand parents," U.S. president John F. Kennedy once said. "But failure is an orphan." Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac is a folk singer in the age of Kennedy. He's a failure but not an orphan. For his father, a retired seaman, lies old and mute in an old seaman's home.
      'Inside Llewyn Davis' is a sad journey through the folk singing world of New York City in the early 1960's. Shivering in the winter cold, and without an overcoat but carrying a cat, Davis travels on a nightmare journey from New York to Chicago, and back again.
     Based loosely on the life of folk singer Dave Van Ronk, the film ends sadly. Davis lies beaten up in a night time street. Meanwhile the young Bob Dylan has started singing  his way to wealth and success  inside the cafe where Davis just performed, perhaps for the very last time. In real life Van Ronk taught Dylan a lot about folk music but this is not in the film.
      "Everything you touch turns to shit," Davis's sometime lover and now pregnant woman shouts at him. "You are shit."
     It may be true and the film's directors, the Coen brothers. have given us a very gloomy glimpse of early 1960's New York City. The film comes alive when Davis picks up a guitar and sings. In fact Justin Timberlake is doing the vocals.
      Yet the folk music is the high point of 'Being Llewyn Davis'. The rest of the film is just one long downer.