proximoception (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
proximoception) wrote2014-04-04 12:52 am
proximoception) wrote2014-04-04 12:52 am
(no subject)
Wow to Inside Llewyn Davis.
Ou les ambiguités.
Ridiculously subtle, more so than even A Serious Man, to which it's a companion piece - though it's also not far off from The Man Who Wasn't There and Barton Fink. The generally borderline insane Armond White had a great line about There Will Be Blood: "It's strange to watch a confidently-made film by a director who doesn't know what he's doing." I was thinking of it watching this, where knowledge and confidence are so evenly balanced. The Coens are Dylan and not Davis, and know it, and it's fascinating that they can nevertheless tell Davis' story.
I'm a complete sucker for when everything means something (epic miswatch of True Detective being a rcent example), as it does here. There's a scene where Davis is in a diner after stumbling around without boots in Chicago snow. He takes his wet-socked foot out of his wet shoe but sets it back down on it uncertainly. It isn't clear whether shelter or exposure is leaving it colder.
He and his sister argue about whether he's made a better decision than his father, who's worked hard to make ends meet, now has dementia. He says his father now merely exists but misspeaks and leaves out the merely, and his sister says how dare you say our father exists. Cf. Man Who Wasn't.
And the rarebit stuff, the shit motif - down to a parody of catharsis (though even that's ambiguous). The heartbreaking cats. The choice of the folk music fad to make these points. The suicide's rebellious choice of bridge. How even those who condemn him live vicariously through him. Those hallways, and having the car ahead peel toward Akron. Magnificent. Even the paying your dues pun, given the license issue - you need to mean it from childhood, mean to not mean or you're stuck meaning.
So good. Such audience trust.
And not even condemning the way Barton Fink was. We don't know if he's good enough, authentic enough, unselfish enough, undeluded enough because he doesn't either. If he's rebelling toward or just from. We don't even know if he's wrong to attack the authenticity of the art form that chose him at the moments when he hits bottom. We only know he hurts himself when he does. His bitter admiring tone when folk music's protector, come in from some other place, leaves town - and saying not God be with you as farewell but 'till we meet again. He only knows it's real, that thing beyond existence, because it hurts him.
They're Dylan, the lucky ones who make it right out the gate, rise and rise, lodge in the firmament; but of course he too spoke back to the moment of not knowing what road to walk down. Because it's not really about money. Or perhaps it is, but you need ever more money to get what you want across - to keep making A Serious Mans rather than Clooney vehicles. To be heard at sixty-five like you were at twenty-five. Every artist is Davis, there is no enough. There is no moment when you know it was worth it. Hell, even No Country for Old Men is essentially McCarthy, and that book's considered one of his worst. And even his best's an imitation of Moby-Dick, a not quite successful attempt to be Shakespeare. Who spent most of his own career trying to become Shakespeare or get back to being Shakespeare. And Hamlet itself can be read as about an artist unsure about either staying or going, about just which successes might be failures and vice versa.
And of course success out the gate is what the succeeder must blame, or worry might be blameworthy. Nothing left to lose may rephrase freedom.
Ha - even "nothing left" means "nothing more" but sounds like "nothing less."
Or: Even when you win in parable you do so by writing/agreeing with Kafka's. "Something ever more about to be" being the only something that's ever more about to be.
I disagree with the fear but understand. And the film does too, to judge by both its ending and Existence.
The opposite of existence isn't non-. The void's not empty. But you can see the temptation to say so, both to protect it and forget it.
How easily those doing one forget which one they're doing.
Ou les ambiguités.
Ridiculously subtle, more so than even A Serious Man, to which it's a companion piece - though it's also not far off from The Man Who Wasn't There and Barton Fink. The generally borderline insane Armond White had a great line about There Will Be Blood: "It's strange to watch a confidently-made film by a director who doesn't know what he's doing." I was thinking of it watching this, where knowledge and confidence are so evenly balanced. The Coens are Dylan and not Davis, and know it, and it's fascinating that they can nevertheless tell Davis' story.
I'm a complete sucker for when everything means something (epic miswatch of True Detective being a rcent example), as it does here. There's a scene where Davis is in a diner after stumbling around without boots in Chicago snow. He takes his wet-socked foot out of his wet shoe but sets it back down on it uncertainly. It isn't clear whether shelter or exposure is leaving it colder.
He and his sister argue about whether he's made a better decision than his father, who's worked hard to make ends meet, now has dementia. He says his father now merely exists but misspeaks and leaves out the merely, and his sister says how dare you say our father exists. Cf. Man Who Wasn't.
And the rarebit stuff, the shit motif - down to a parody of catharsis (though even that's ambiguous). The heartbreaking cats. The choice of the folk music fad to make these points. The suicide's rebellious choice of bridge. How even those who condemn him live vicariously through him. Those hallways, and having the car ahead peel toward Akron. Magnificent. Even the paying your dues pun, given the license issue - you need to mean it from childhood, mean to not mean or you're stuck meaning.
So good. Such audience trust.
And not even condemning the way Barton Fink was. We don't know if he's good enough, authentic enough, unselfish enough, undeluded enough because he doesn't either. If he's rebelling toward or just from. We don't even know if he's wrong to attack the authenticity of the art form that chose him at the moments when he hits bottom. We only know he hurts himself when he does. His bitter admiring tone when folk music's protector, come in from some other place, leaves town - and saying not God be with you as farewell but 'till we meet again. He only knows it's real, that thing beyond existence, because it hurts him.
They're Dylan, the lucky ones who make it right out the gate, rise and rise, lodge in the firmament; but of course he too spoke back to the moment of not knowing what road to walk down. Because it's not really about money. Or perhaps it is, but you need ever more money to get what you want across - to keep making A Serious Mans rather than Clooney vehicles. To be heard at sixty-five like you were at twenty-five. Every artist is Davis, there is no enough. There is no moment when you know it was worth it. Hell, even No Country for Old Men is essentially McCarthy, and that book's considered one of his worst. And even his best's an imitation of Moby-Dick, a not quite successful attempt to be Shakespeare. Who spent most of his own career trying to become Shakespeare or get back to being Shakespeare. And Hamlet itself can be read as about an artist unsure about either staying or going, about just which successes might be failures and vice versa.
And of course success out the gate is what the succeeder must blame, or worry might be blameworthy. Nothing left to lose may rephrase freedom.
Ha - even "nothing left" means "nothing more" but sounds like "nothing less."
Or: Even when you win in parable you do so by writing/agreeing with Kafka's. "Something ever more about to be" being the only something that's ever more about to be.
I disagree with the fear but understand. And the film does too, to judge by both its ending and Existence.
The opposite of existence isn't non-. The void's not empty. But you can see the temptation to say so, both to protect it and forget it.
How easily those doing one forget which one they're doing.
no subject
no subject