Inside Llewyn
Davis
by RAR
In
2014, the Coen Brothers (Joel
and Ethan) released
Inside Llewyn Davis, their
exploration of the phenomenon of the "Folk Music Revival"
of the 1950s and early 1960s, and
most specifically the era in which folk music morphed into
strains that are still a big part of pop music today.
Inside Llewyn Davis was a beguiling
character study of a single representative - roughly based on the life
of folk music hero Dave Van Ronk - and
the societal and psychological forces that were driving fundamental changes
in that dusty and multi-faceted musical form in that era.
Folk music, in
its 20th Century incarnation, was brought to life by a renewed interest in
the 1930s in folk dancing. Perhaps it was a reaction to the hedonism of the
1920s, but for some reason during the Great Depression Americans began to
realize a renewed interest in square dance and other manifestations of down
home entertainment. Folk dance, and folk music, provided an
inexpensive, low-profile way to satisfy ancestral stirrings that had been
brought to life by international conflict, because from the Spanish-American
War of 1898, and thereafter, Americans were reminded daily that the world was getting
smaller, and in the process group identification was receiving greater and
greater focus.
One
could argue that the seeds of western folk music were planted
with the American Revolution, beginning in 1765, and then were
further cultivated by the 1789 French Revolution, both of which
forwarded the notion that individuals should be allowed freedoms
to determine the courses of their own lives. This was heady and
optimistic stuff, but it also created a dissonance between the
sovereignty of individuals and ideas about the fiduciary
responsibilities of the governments under which they lived.
While most people could figure out ways to sustain their
existences, there were times in everyone's life when they needed
help, or assistance, and the sources of such assistance were
typically church groups and the government. The world has been
locked in this conundrum ever since freedom began to clash with
need and dependency, and since empathy began to clash with self
interests. What is the proper place for people to turn for
assistance?
In
the mid-1800s this question produced the ideology of Communism
(Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels), under which individual freedoms
would be sacrificed in return for government-provided economic
and social security. The surrender of individual freedoms was,
of course, anathema to western ideology, and this took on
particular significance when in 1905 rebel forces aligned with
the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Marxist Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party overthrew Tsarist rule of Russia. This
set the stage for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, after which
the world was presented with two diametrically opposed types of
government, each of which would fight for dominance.
In
the U.S., "right-wing" politicians dug in their heals. They
began to see a logic in involvement in foreign wars, and they
began to see government assistance programs as extensions of a
communist philosophy that, if allowed to spread, would ruin the
form of government that they vowed to defend.
Living under the yoke of these extreme ideologies were common
folks who experienced boom and bust cycles as their shaken-up
worlds struggled to find equilibrium. World War I introduced a
generation of Americans and Europeans to a new kind of war. It
pitted man against machine and chemicals in ways so horrific
that it traumatized
the world, and produced the
Treaty of Versailles, which set the stage for a
second world war twenty years later.
In the interim, the western world experienced an economic bubble
and a decade of excess, followed by economic collapse (15
percent drop in the worldwide gross domestic produce, 1929 to
1932), and a devastating climatic event (the "Dust Bowl") in the
western U.S.. Unemployment in America in that period rose to 25
percent, officially, and in cities people were lining up at soup
kitchens.
The
urge within the human spirit to replace our worries and cares
with moments of refreshing distraction produced the folk revival
of the 1930s, and in a time when people could see a movie for a
quarter (that equals well over $3 in today's money) Hollywood
experienced a "golden period". The movies of that period were
extraordinarily literate, because reading remained another of
the things people did to improve themselves through education
and exposure to information that they had no other way to
access. Reading also provided distraction, though neither books
nor films avoided critical examination of the developments
taking place in the world at that time. Director Frank Capra
created American Madness, in 1932, about a corrupt
banker, and in 1936 the film Black Legion depicted the
story of a man whose disappointment in the workplace leads him
to xenophobia and enrollment in the Ku Klux Klan. Films like
these would soon thereafter become governed by movie studio
executives who were in the grip of political and ideological
influences that were leading inexorably to World War II. Certain
types of political messaging became subject to prohibition and
censorship.
This Land Is Your Land
Wandering around the country, in the midst of all this, was
Oklahoma troubadour Woody Guthrie,
the composer of "This Land Is Your Land". Before becoming a star
performing on radio in Los Angeles, he made his mark traveling
with the farm community that was abandoning the Oklahoma Dust
Bowl in favor of the rich lands of California. Many of those
desperate folks, depicted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of
Wrath, found the going tough on the west coast, too, and
many eventually returned to Oklahoma. Those that stayed
experienced a kind of American xenophobia against people from
other states. Some California mothers instructed their
children to stay away from the children of "Okies".
World War II created an incredible dilemma for the people and
the government of the United States. The war in Europe was one
for which some German-born U.S. citizens returned to Germany to
fight for their homeland. It wasn't because they were in
allegiance to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party, but because
their countrymen were suffering under the cruel reparations
outlined in the Treaty of Versailles -- a long hangover
from World War I -- and they were trying to rebuild a proud
national identity. There was a Nazi Party in the United States
-- the German American Bund (1936) -- comprised of
5,000-to-10,000 Americans of German descent, that had been
more-or-less sponsored by Nazi Deputy Führer
Rudolph Hess. American banker Prescott Bush, and his Union Bank
Corporation, financed the German war machine until he was
shutdown by the Alien Property Commission, after which he became
a U.S. Senator. (Prescott was the patriarch or the Bush family
that has brought us U.S. Presidents George H.W. and George W.
Bush, as well as presidential candidate Jeb Bush, and the lesser
known Marvin Bush, who was the principal officer in charge of
the company that provided security for the World Trade Center,
destroyed on September 11, 2001).
By
1941, Woody Guthrie was a big star and that's when he labeled
his acoustic guitar with a message reading "This machine kills
fascists". That same year, folk legend
Pete Seeger joined with
Guthrie, Josh White, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, and
Bess Lomax Hawes, to form the
Almanac Singers. Folk music became politicized in
overt ways.
Folk music, beginning in World
War II, changed from
being a third-person story-telling exercise to being a first-person
expression of thoughts about
who we are, and about our place is in this world.
The defeat of
Nazi Germany spelled the end of that fascist rule, but it also marked the
beginning of the Cold War. Americans had played a key role in the defeat of
Adolph Hitler, but it had been the overwhelming power of the Russian army
that had been responsible for Hitler's defeat. There was a real fear in the
U.S. government that the army of Joseph Stalin would sweep across Europe in
the vacuum left by Nazi Germany, and expand the range of communist rule,
seen as a direct threat to American-style democracy. To combat the Russian
threat, the U.S. government welcomed former Nazi security officers and
research scientists into their intelligence community, leading to the
creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, which exploited Nazi advances in key disciplines. This
also set the stage for a coming wave of political paranoia that would become
known as the McCarthy Era, when investigations into the ideological
commitments of individuals would lead to the "black-listing" of people
considered to have communist sympathies.
Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, and
Lee Hays started printing a quarterly called the People's
Songs Bulletin in 1946, aimed specifically to promote songs about the
plight of the working man. This encouraged the publication of other folk
music magazines, including Sing Out! and Broadside. Then in
1948, Seeger and Hays joined with Fred Hellerman
and Ronnie Gilbert to form the seminal
folk quartet The Weavers. They turned
folk music into a pop culture phenomenon, scoring big radio hits with Lead
Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", "So Long It's Been Good to Know You (Dusty Old
Dust)", and "Kisses Sweeter than Wine". They also scored big with the
Israeli dance song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena", but in 1950 it came to a crashing
end when Seeger was listed as a subversive in the publication Red
Channels. Decca Records dropped The Weavers and Seeger and Lee Hays were
called before the House Un-American Activities
Committee in 1955. Folk music became associated with left-wing,
subversive activity. Driven from the airwaves, it became an underground
activity, banished to coffee shops, home parties, and events that became
known as hootenannies.
New
York City's Greenwich Village became one of the few centers for
folk music during this period, and there was born the legend of
Dave Von Ronk, "The Mayor of
MacDougal Street". He was notable for bringing ragtime guitar
music into the folk spectrum, which inspired the playing styles
of many folk artists thereafter. The list includes Bob Dylan,
Tom Paxton, Patrick Sky, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliott,
Guthrie Thomas, and even Joni Mitchell.
Llewyn Davis World
This
is the world in which Inside Llewyn
Davis is set, and for all of the reasons
described above it was a strange place, populated by college
kids attracted to the sing-along opportunities around which some
of "modern folk" was based, and earnest hipsters, influenced by
the Beat jazz of the '50s, for whom folk was a serious message
music. There was a clear crossover between those two extremes,
which only added to the surreal quality one feels in so much of
the folk music of the era.
In
the Coen Brothers film, Llewyn Davis is brilliantly portrayed by
Oscar Isaac, a merchant
marine (like Van Ronk) and coffee house folk singer whose
legitimate talents go unrewarded for reasons his character may
have stopped trying to understand. He produces a beautiful
sound, but gives off a personal energy that is somehow
nullifying. Listeners don't respond to him. Even those who
recognize his talent suggest that he would be better off working
as a group member, where his personal attributes wouldn't be so
much on display.
The
actor Oscar Isaac performs a feat with Llewyn Davis that even
the film's director and producer had suspected might be simply
impossible. They needed an actor who could effectively portray
this low voltage, and yet hot-simmering, character in ways that
wouldn't make it impossible for audiences to reject him.
Moreover, they had to have an actor who could sing songs live,
in their entirety, and do it effectively enough to keep the
audiences attention while convincing them of his legitimate
talent.
For
much of the movie, Llewyn Davis sings beautifully but without
emotion, as if he isn't fully committed to the things he feels
deeply. This is key to understanding the turmoil taking place
within the Davis character. He doesn't really believe in
himself. Then near the end of the film there is a moment when
Oscar Isaac, as Llewyn Davis, suddenly demonstrates a brief
moment of obvious passion, and in that moment we as audience
members perk up a bit and notice him in ways different than we
had before. It is a tremendously nuanced performance, made
possible only by the extent to which Oscar Isaac can be
perceived as a legitimate folk singer, which is something the
Julliard-trained Isaac was not prior to taking on the role of
Llewyn Davis.
Bob Dylan World
Inside Llewyn Davis ends
with a new figure moving into frame from the background; a
character representing Bob Dylan.
Dylan is the true embodiment of the person Llewyn Davis probably
wishes he could be: the troubadour who cuts through the white
noise of the Kingston Trio brand of folk to connect with
audiences on a visceral level. Dylan showed up late in the folk
revival and he was pushing the form out of shape, bending it
inexorably toward a new form of expression that would meld
meaning-heavy folk with beat-heavy rock. He was the folk singer
come full circle, from a troubadour telling tales of things that
happened to someone to a diarist telling tales about things that
happened to him personally. The young Dylan was apparently beset
by personal conflicts because so many of his early songs pointed
an accusatory finger at people who had betrayed his friendship
or otherwise committed crimes against his sensitivities. He
basked in schadenfreude, relishing the discomforts of people
whose frailties had brought them to sorry ends. "How does it
feel when you got no secrets to conceal?" Even Dylan's protest
anthems "Blowin' In the Wind" and "The Times They Are A
Changing" are harangues, in their fashion, clear challenges to
those natures within mankind that would repeat destructive ways
and cling to conventions that are no longer working.
Bob
Dylan was the attitude of Llewyn Davis confirmed and justified.
For the record, my grandfather John
Frick was a fiddle player who regularly played local events in
the 1930s through the 1950s, in California, Kansas, and Nebraska, calling
square dance and playing songs of an earlier time that spoke to the issues
that concerned the average working man.
|