{"id":8262,"date":"2013-12-20T17:06:56","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T17:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/12\/20\/friday-cat-blogging-inside-llewyn-davis\/"},"modified":"2013-12-20T17:06:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T17:06:56","slug":"friday-cat-blogging-inside-llewyn-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/12\/20\/friday-cat-blogging-inside-llewyn-davis\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Cat Blogging: Inside Llewyn Davis<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Llewyn<\/a>To Scottsdale this drizzly dreary dark December morning to see the Coen Bros. latest on its opening hereabouts, Inside Llewyn Davis<\/a>.    A tale of two kitties is a sub-motif that symbolizes the self-destructive folksinger's troubles, but it would take a couple more viewings for me to figure it out.<\/span><\/p>\n

The film gripped me and held me its entire running length, but then I lived through that era and I know the music and its major and minor players.  Figuring out the the cinematic references and allusions is part of the fun.  Tom Paxton, Albert Grossmann, Jim and Jean, The Clancy Brothers, Bob Dylan . . . they are all there — or are they?  <\/span><\/p>\n

A distinction is made between purely fictional objects (native objects) and immigrant objects: historical individuals that have been imported into fiction from reality.   Many of the characters in the Coen Bros. film seem to belong to a third category.  They are not wholly unreal like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, or lightly fictionalized individuals like many of the characters in Kerouac's novels, but fictional surrogates of real-life individuals.  For example, there is a character who suggests Tom Paxton, but could not be said unambiguously to represent him, pace<\/em> Dave van Ronk's ex-wife who writes, in a critical review<\/a>, "The character who represents Tom Paxton has a pasted-on smile and is a smug person who doesn't at all resemble the smart, funny, witty Tom Paxton who was our best man when we married." <\/span><\/p>\n

Ann Hornaday's Washington Post<\/em> review<\/a> ends brilliantly:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In many ways, \u201cInside Llewyn Davis\u201d plays like a waking nightmare of creeping anxiety and dread, as the era\u2019s grandmaster of brazen self-invention arrives unseen in New York while Llewyn\u2019s self-defeating near-misses pile up like so much street-sullied snow. But this soulful, unabashedly lyrical film is best enjoyed by sinking into it like a sweet, sad dream. When you wake up, a mythical place and time will have disappeared forever. But you\u2019ll know that attention \u2014 briefly, beautifully \u2014 has been paid.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The era's grandmaster of brazen self-invention is of course Bob Dylan, who blew into town that bitter winter of '61 and who in a few short years brought about a sort of Hegelian Aufhebung<\/em> of the folk era: its simultaneous cancellation, preservation, and transmogrification into the heart of the '60s as represented by the trilogy of Dylan at his most incandescent: Bringing it It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited,  Blonde on Blonde.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It's all Over Now, Baby Blue<\/a> from the the first-mentioned album perhaps sounds the theme of cultural shift.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/span><\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Cat Blogging Dylan Friday<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Saturday Night at the Oldies: Doc Watson<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Inside Llewyn Davis: The Coen brothers' bittersweet evocation of the sixties folk scene<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Scottsdale this drizzly dreary dark December morning to see the Coen Bros. latest on its opening hereabouts, Inside Llewyn Davis.    A tale of two kitties is a sub-motif that symbolizes the self-destructive folksinger's troubles, but it would take a couple more viewings for me to figure it out. The film gripped me and held … Continue reading “Friday Cat Blogging: Inside Llewyn Davis<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,385,18,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema","category-film","category-music","category-sixties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}