Not sure if it has a meaning. A lot of Cohen films are tricky with their message, if there is any.

I figured it was a story about this lost guy or whatever. I think they're trying to say something about him with the cats. Like how one is on the loose... And how he shuts the door for that other cat in the car with the jazz dude. Like some kind of self loathing? "Don't be like me"?

There's that scene where he disses the girl and her plans to have a stable family life. Telling her it's square and sad.

But yeah, I'd like to know too. Shame there are so few posts in this board. Great film no matter what.

But you have to look for a theme, not a bunch of random stuff that happens. And how is it a great film?

I assume the theme is an insight into the uphill battle of many a folk musician who didnt want to 'sell out' prior to the arrival of Dylan. Plus the struggle between staying true to your principles on one hand and doing what is in your 'best interests' on the other. The latter is what struck me most and in theory I think would be enough to drive a film, but not in this case. There just wasnt quite enough going on that I was emotionally invested in. I gave it 6/10.

Ahhhhh, yes. He was the guy who wanted to be a true folk musician and resisted the commercialization of that genre. And at the very end, Robert Zimmerman shows up on stage just as he steps outside to take a beating from a stranger. God, I hate folk music.

@MongoLloyd said:

But you have to look for a theme, not a bunch of random stuff that happens. And how is it a great film?

You know, once you find what seems like the main theme, you can connect the dots as far as seemingly random stuff, using that theme.

But there's a lot of unrelated stuff that doesn't support the main theme.

@MongoLloyd said:

But there's a lot of unrelated stuff that doesn't support the main theme.

That's cool... I'm still trying to figure out the theme of No Country For Old Men. It's a really good, gripping film, but by the time Tommy Lee Jones gets into his final speech in it, my attention wanes. I believe the speech is important to the theme of NCFOM, but I just can't break it down, lol. For some reason, I stay kinda impatient with the film.

Perhaps that unrelated stuff you mentioned figures into a smaller theme that's different from the central one..... :-)

Well... NCFOM... to me was about the inevitability of death. Chigurh was death personified and he would find you no matter who you were or where you were.

I guess I don't understand L Davis's constant bad luck and what that had to do with anything. And is Dylan supposed to be ironic in that he was a contrived folk singer who was passed off as being totally authentic?

@MongoLloyd said:

Well... NCFOM... to me was about the inevitability of death. Chigurh was death personified and he would find you no matter who you were or where you were.

I like that! It plays into the title of the book and film well. I’m gonna keep that in mind the next time I watch NCFOM.

I guess I don't understand L Davis's constant bad luck and what that had to do with anything. And is Dylan supposed to be ironic in that he was a contrived folk singer who was passed off as being totally authentic?

Honestly, I haven’t seen the Coens’ film that’s the main topic of discussion... I just keep on doing that here, ha.

@MongoLloyd said:

But you have to look for a theme, not a bunch of random stuff that happens. And how is it a great film?

I don't know if you HAVE TO look for a theme but even if you would you find a theme by the little things that together make up the theme.

I think it's a great film (and I just mean a very good film, not some homage statement) because... I think it's visually pleasing, there is a lot of good acting, some good dialogue, and it being unpredictable unlike most of the stuff that comes out of American mainstream film production today. Well, one predictable thing was they threw in Dylan in there but incidentally I just loved the choice of song and how it came on right at the end.

But like some other Coen films, like NCFOM, I haven't gotten exactly what they were trying to say... If there was a specific message. When you read up on it a little bit it doesn't seem like it does.

Yeah, I just watched this again and I honestly just don't get it. What did Llewyn want? Who was the antagonist? What growth did Llewyn experience by the end of the story?

@MongoLloyd said:

Yeah, I just watched this again and I honestly just don't get it. What did Llewyn want? Who was the antagonist? What growth did Llewyn experience by the end of the story?

The film is written and directed by the Coens and was released in 2013. Does Llewyn really have to experience substantial growth by the end of the story?

When it was released and who wrote and directed it is irrelevant. And yeah, that's one of the primary goals of a film protagonist.

@MongoLloyd said:

When it was released and who wrote and directed it is irrelevant. And yeah, that's one of the primary goals of a film protagonist.

What I was getting at is this: Your paradigm of how to write a script may be religious rule to a screenwriter who’s trying to break into the business - but the Coens are established filmmakers who can afford to break the rules. Capice? My point about it being a 2013 film is reinforcement of that idea - as the medium grows older, filmmakers are more eager to break rules.

Finally, I don’t think it’s necessarily the goal of the character to experience growth - the growth is something that happens due to his or her overcoming his or her problems and/or obstacles.

No, that's not how it works. A film story (screenplay) is a certain thing. If you want to watch a novella on screen, go to it, but audiences generally don't embrace film stories that aren't film stories. Only filmmakers like the Coen's could get away with that because they have amassed enough fanboys to literally throw anything on a screen and make a profit from it.

I would suggest that this story, if made by a no-name director with a no-name cast, would have never been seen by anyone more than the cast and filmmaker's friends and family.