Inside llewyn davis free#
The cat is continually trying to run away, breaking free first in the subway car and later down Jim and Jean's fire escape, and Llewyn is continually chasing after it, trying to hold on. One of the film's most painful moments comes during dinner at their house, when Llewyn becomes furious at Mrs Gorfein mid-performance for attempting to sing Mike's part. The Gorfeins are the cat's owners and also seem to be the characters who knew Mike best besides Llewyn, to the point where some viewers have assumed they are Mike's parents. There are a couple of clues supporting this theory.
It's as 'Fare Thee Well' is playing that the cat escapes and Llewyn begins carrying it with him. We hear Mike and Llewyn sing together on 'Fare Thee Well', and it's immediately clear from the warm, earthy sound why Llewyn worked better as one half of a whole his voice alone is distinctly melancholic, less accessible. The recent suicide of his musical partner Mike (voiced by Marcus Mumford), who we're given to understand was the frontman in their double act, has thrown him into a funk both professionally and emotionally. Llewyn isn't cut out to be a solo artist. But the cat seems to represent something darker, the same something that makes Isaac's Llewyn a sympathetic character, despite how abrasive and self-defeating he is. Meanwhile, The Guardian suggested that it's a sly in-joke, with the Coens riffing on a screenwriting trope made famous by Blake Snyder: get your audience to love a character by having them "save the cat".
One of the most popular theories, as eloquently espoused by The Atlantic, is that the cat is Llewyn and represents a means for the Coens to explore their protagonist's identity crisis. That concerned us at one point - that's why we threw the cat in," Joel Coen joked at Cannes last year, but this is classic Coen misdirection.
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