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ILL-GOTTEN GAINS

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JaesRollBaja

Jae’s winnings after three days in Las Vegas — most of it from a poker tournament tonight in which he cashed in third place. I got knocked out halfway through going all-in on a flush draw that didn’t pan out.

So it goes.

ALL IS LOST

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This is not a terribly enjoyable film to watch — it’s harrowing and unsettling. It’s also extremely odd — a film with almost no dialogue. It’s about a sailor on a small boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean whose vessel receives a near-fatal injury, forcing the sailor to improvise a series of responses to the catastrophe in order to survive.

Things go from bad to worse — the sea does what it will with a sailor in distress. But the sailor keeps improvising, in the face of the worst the sea has to offer.

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Robert Redford plays the sailor.  Those who think that movie stars live or die by the dialogue they’re given need to look at Redford’s performance in this film.  He has no dialogue — just a little voice-over speech at the beginning.  And yet he’s consistently fascinating to watch.

Probably only an established star could have pulled off a performance like this — someone so confident in his or her screen persona that he or she is sure the audience will pay attention to the smallest details of eye movement, of facial expression.  If Redford had overacted this part even a little it would have been a disaster.

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So — no dialogue, grueling action on a tiny circumscribed platform, subtle acting . . . and yet the film is riveting.  It’s a nautical procedural in which each procedure is invested with suspense, a kind of dogged, stoic heroism, and what Yeats called “the fascination of what’s difficult.”

WHO KNEW?

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This is Caganer, the figure of a little boy taking a dump, who appears in traditional Catalan nativity scenes. He dates back at least to the 18th Century but no one knows what his presence is meant to convey. Suggestions have been that he’s there to amuse small children, to remind us that we never know when salvation will arrive, to show that, at bottom, all human being are equal.

In any case, I can’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t appear in a nativity scene.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

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There’s a line in a Bob Dylan song — “I know plenty of people put me up for a day or two” — that perfectly sums up everybody’s scrambling days, when you were between fixed abodes, between relationships, between steady jobs, between plans, between dreams . . . when you wore out every welcome you received because you didn’t know where the next welcome was coming from, when you were too proud to go home to mom and dad (and maybe you’d worn out their welcome, too), when you just didn’t know what the fuck you were going to do next.

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When you’re young you figure such days will pass, and they usually do, after a fashion, but you never really get over them.  Inside Llewyn Davis is about such days in the life of a struggling folksinger in New York in the early 1960s.  Its evocation of that time and place, that musical scene, is magical, but it’s the evocation of Llewyn’s scrambling life that makes the film memorable.

It’s not one of the Coen brothers’ most inspired efforts — the litany of Llewyn’s woes gets a bit repetitive after a while.  Once you realize that nothing is going to turn out well for Llewyn the narrative loses momentum.  And yet . . . Inside Llewyn Davis gets at something, portrays something, that few films ever have.

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[Image © Langdon Clay]

I spent many of my own scrambling days in New York in the 70s so the film brings back poignant memories, and a curious personal revelation.  I got all, or almost all of the things I dreamed about getting in the 70s and one by one they have all evaporated or come to seem hollow — and I feel today more like that scrambling kid in his 20s than I ever have since the 70s.  With one difference — I’m no longer looking for a home in this world, I mean, one that I can rely on.  I know that all homes are provisional, as provisional as sleeping on a couch in a friend’s living room.

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So it’s heartbreaking to see Llewyn Davis’s heartbreak as he looks for a home, a place for himself.  I want to slip him 20 bucks and tell him not to worry — tell him that he’s already as home as he’ll ever be, that life is a perpetual scramble, and worth the discombobulation.  Not that he’d listen, anymore than I would have when I was in my 20s.

Click on the images to enlarge.