Film review essay: Inside Llewyn Davis: Faltering steps in the incredible journey from adolescence to adulthood

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis as representing in microcosm the developmental trajectory from late adolescence towards adulthood for the title character. This entails negotiating the problems of unconscious guilt, failure to mourn and an awareness of time in order to effect a movement from masochistic melancholy and hidden grandiosity to being able to relinquish omnipotent phantasies, say au revoir to internal persecutors and achieve a degree of self-possession.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescence
• development
• mourning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Virgil is referencing Penelope’s distinction between the two gates of dreams in The Odyssey, rendered by Fagles (1996) as “the dreams that pass through the gate of polished horn/Are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them” (Book XIX, 637–638).

2 That there was an actual Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago at this time, run by Albert (not Bud) Grossman, who later managed Dylan, does not negate the significance I attribute to this name and its classical allusions. The Coen brothers’ interest in classical literature is well known, O Brother Where Art Thou? being a loose retelling of The Odyssey.

3 Heylin (2009) describes this song as an adaptation of The Leaving of Liverpool, thus emphasizing the departure motif in this scene.