Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A struggling musician struggles also with a cat.

The folk phenomenon of the 1960s was a cooptation of popular aesthetics by urban youths, gathering mostly in New York City. So, it was a bourgeois capitalist phenomenon from the outset, and thus an illustration of the alliance between Capital and the Cultural Left. One of the tropes of historiography is the conflict of, on one side, the several races in their respective homelands, and, on the other, foreign elements which come and go with catlike ease. The literary reference for this film seems to be Joyce's Ulysses with its circular narrative (I have not read the book). The templates for the novel's hero Bloom are many, from its ostensive Greek model to the Wandering Jew legend, who in turn may be a later version of Cain, the first homicide, who was doomed to perpetually roam the Earth. So, it is striking that both Capitalism and Leftist Liberalism have this in common, that they abhor borders. That they have joined to ape and profit from that which was essentially -- to quote the name of the book by Kip Lornell -- an ethnic, grassroots and regional genre is ironic, but what isn't in modernity? The film in question is a humorous piece, moderately enjoyable, as are the schoolgirlish attempts by critics at deciphering its erudite in-jokes.

Rating: 57