The tide of loneliness is a personal one. Its fabric is shrouded in a sort of reverie that floats over the horizon like a mirage. Only visible to you, it blurs every path in your way. As much as you want to get closer to it – to embrace it, make something of it - the farther and farther it walks away from you.
Inside Llewyn Davis tells a tale of what it means to be far inside of oneself and far outside. It connects with you, in the strangest way, because it’s an honest film. Films like these are hard to come by. And once they do follow through - a bittersweet pill that is hard to swallow - it’s memorable.
The film is cloaked in isolation and sadness. About a struggling musician in the early sixties, the protagonist embodies an inner voice. Fragile, intense, and unheard in a world defeated with people. Inside Llewyn Davis creates an unbeatable world in which you see him travel from one single point of failure to another. Rejection after rejection pulled into the direction of numbness and apathy. Such is the gruesome path of loneliness in art that couldn’t have been art without it.
It’s an unforgiving film which is quite characteristic in its making. The cinematography is deeply inviting and pulls you in instantly with the help of subtle cues shadowing some of life’s most significant questions. Dialogue which is as surrealistic and shattering as the setting in which it is being said throws humor into the mix beautifully. It really contemplates what we find difficult to finish, and that is the ability to map our struggle in a territorial world.