I have been reluctant to watch Cohen's "Inside Llewyn Davis", but I am already familiar with each original sound.
A ballad is a person's life, an ordinary person who has never lived before, like a grain of sand in the vast sea of sand, with his singing left us his love, hate and sadness in a foreign land, his fear and hesitation when he was dying, and the dream of his youth. with memories.
Folk songs are the self-remembering of ordinary life, revealing the golden simplicity of wheat, and the gentleness of Wen Xu in the evening wind, the chaotic and heavy whispers of street lamps, the futile carving of the river of time, and the mutual comfort of generations of singers and listeners. Laugh at yourself.
"If a song isn't new and doesn't get old, it's folk."
Cohen's Westerns, which never win with violence (contrast Tarantino), are always dark and witty ("The Ballad"), and even some idiotic jokes ("Three Kings"). And this musical film with a folk singer as the protagonist has almost a kind of indifferent and cold Nordic style, but the characters and dialogues are so Cohen, so naughty, good at making fun of bitterness and telling bad jokes.
Unlike a ballad, this film tells not a legend, a complete story, but just some fleeting and seemingly mundane fragments of Llewyn's life. Just as most people's lives are not stagnant, yet subversive or surprising, Llewyn struggles day after day in vain as a loser who seems doomed.
Llewyn is not a wanderer with a distinct personality, he is a wanderer with a vague outline. He clings to his beloved ballads and hits the wall everywhere, but he can balance music and survival; The elderly singer scolded...
He is not a contradictory and profound person, just like us, he has gradually rubbed off the edges and corners in the busy rush, but his heart is still sharp; the excess emotions are gradually diluted by the cruelty of life, and indifference has become the melody in his eyes, but he cannot hide it. The desire to sing.
He will bully the weak, just like others bully him; he will let down everyone in his life who has loved and cared about him; he will embark on a trip to New York that is doomed to fail again and again; he will mess everything up... However, we still like him, just like we hate ourselves enough, and finally choose to like ourselves.
Llewyn visits her estranged father in a nursing home and plays "The Shoals of Herring" for him. It's a Celtic fisherman song reminiscent of Llewyn's father's homeland of Wales. Singing and singing, the old man's eyes gradually blurred, and he twisted his neck, as if he was uncomfortable with revealing his true feelings in front of his son. But it was Dad who actually pooped on his pants.
We want to impress others, but often no one can be moved, only ourselves.
Llewyn ran all the way to see Mr Grossman, who was snorted by the singers. He sang so deeply that he couldn't help himself, and the other party said: I don't see lots of money in there. This is the reality of "getting up and making money" every day In the world, when a hobby becomes a livelihood, and the success or failure of this livelihood depends on the approval of the crowd, then the loners who move against the current are mostly always restless and wandering losers.
During Llewyn's short-lived and long-lived days of wandering, he met three cats one after another, each of which was a big orange with a human face. Llewyn looked at Tachibana, always with complicated expressions, affectionate and cruel to them, sympathetic and pitiful, and heartfelt. Once lost accidentally, once left resolutely, once unintentionally bruised a cat and stared at the legendary cat on the movie poster who traveled through the thousands of miles of snow in a sad daze. Can the crippled cat survive this severe winter?
When Lillian told him that the big orange was called Ulysses, Llewyn picked up the lost cat and cried out in surprise: Ulysses? Is this your name?
Ulysses, this name affects too many memories: Ulysses of Joyce, Ulysses of Angelopoulos... They are all lonely wanderers who are alienated from reality, but give Llewyn comfort , became the song of his heart.
Not trying to inspire us, not filling us with dreams, but showing us the paleness and deep weariness of reality, this is also a ballad. It's a broken guitar playing shiny and shiny in a motel, a torn padded jacket tightly wrapped on a snow-covered highway, a ghostly orange cat, and you and I are close to each other.
A wanderer with a vague outline, writing his lonely song on a lonely road, this song is only for himself, and the passers-by who hear it by chance.
…wouldn't mind the hanging,
but the laying in the grave so long
poor boy, I've been
all around this world.
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