At the Movies

"Inside Llewyn Davies" struck me as Hieronymus Bosch brought to the screen, the torment of a damned soul by imps including fat women (from the Upper East Side and the Ozarks), fat men (from Seafarers International Union and from the jazz world), urban dirtbags, and pale people from the sticks. It struck me also as a waste of brimstone, for the main character seemed to be armed for no sins but rudeness and sulking. He is said in the film to have impregnated a couple of women, but he has no obvious charms to attract them. He has regular features, a good beard, and a decent voice: still, in the Greenwich Village of 1961 these can hardly have been rare. For that matter, the one of these women that we see projects no sensuality, though of course--this is the movies--she is beautiful, and she does deliver a few minutes of vituperation with some conviction.

There is a nice touch in the matching scenes at beginning and end. Given the rest of the movie, they recalled the Last Judgement painted inside the dome of the cathedral in Florence: one can start at a punishment, follow the action around 360 degrees and return to it