Geraldine Brooks – People Of The Book

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Book Review, Geraldine Brooks, People of The Book, Sacred texts, Sarajevo Haggadah

Down all the dusty roads that lead toward home

Geraldine Brooks’ part modern part historical novel with a book within the book as the major ‘character’ is a fascinating if not completely successful read.

Brooks does historical, not to mention geographical, extremely well, as evidenced by this and previous works – Year Of Wonders, her first book, about the plague in England in 1666 was very fine. Brooks is an Aussie, now resident in The States, and researches her different periods, different cultures, extremely well, so that readers do feel satisfying and realistically transported to times and places not their own.

The springboard for this particular book, People of The Book, has a real identity in the book itself, and in its known provenance in terms of times, places, events, as far as can be yielded by academic research.

Sarajevo Haggadah page, Wiki Commons, copyright expired

The ‘Book’ of the title is a famous (in ancient and rare book circles) tome called The Sarajevo Haggadah. Apologies to the cognoscenti, but for the benefit of those (like me) who had never heard of this book, a Haggadah is a Jewish text read at the Passover festival. The Sarajevo Haggadah, which dates from the fourteenth century, and is a beautifully illustrated manuscript, using hand ground paints, including colour from gems and minerals – lapis lazuli, copper, gold leaf, and hand written on specially prepared parchment from animal skins. It has a known, surprising history from the last century, being rescued from destruction twice by Muslims – once during the Second World War, by an Islamic scholar, who rescued it from certain destruction as a Jewish text, hiding it in a mosque. Then again, during the Bosnian war in the 90’s, when Sarajevo was under firebombing siege, it was rescued and hidden in a bank vault for safe-keeping by a Muslim librarian.

However, the much travelling Haggadah, which is thought to originate in Spain, during a period when Jews, Christians and Muslims coexisted in peace, ‘the Convivencia’, can be traced along several journeys from the fourteenth century, mirroring the history of Jewry during various pogroms. The book had a home in Venice in the early seventeenth century, and surfaced  in Bosnia at the latter part of the nineteenth century, when Bosnia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It got relocated to Vienna at this time.

Brooks tells the story of where the book was known to be at various times, and the writer’s imagination peoples the known history of the place and time, particularly around what is known about Jewish communities, and how Jews were allowed, or not, to be within the wider community of the time and place.

Map of the Sarajevo Haggadah’s journey – book endpapers

The historical sections, even though at some points she lectures rather on facts we need to know – how parchment was prepared, brushes and colours made, and who did these things, are in the main absolutely absorbing, and were the book merely presented unadorned as the history of the book, I would have loved it without reservation.

However what doesn’t work quite so well is the creation of a further story. The central person in the book is Hanna, an invented Australian rare book restorer, with her own troubled history – a difficult relationship with her neurosurgeon mother, the mystery of her own birth, and her trail past and present lovers. Even though Brooks is an Aussie, there is something almost too saltily overcharacterised in Hanna’s strine brashness, so she feels a little like an intelligent Aussie cipher with attitude, far less believable than the more distant inventions of the book within. Each time I came out of the past and into a Hanna section, my interest drifted, she seemed a bit of an authorial device, who had to be given credibility by her own back story, in order to achieve a particular narrative twist

The over arching story of the book, which almost acts as a real symbol of how humanity can transcend the divisions and enmities which the human race itself creates, is a testament to the importance of books, of knowledge and wisdom shared, of how much we can learn from other cultures from their book, and of the transcending power of books, their writers and their readers. And to the importance of a humanity prepared to accommodate each other in community. People, and their books, finding home.

As Brooks quotes, right at the start, from the nineteenth century German poet Heinrich Heine

There, where one burns books,
One in the end burns men

I was teased and steered towards this  from another blogger, Carrie Rubin, making a comment about it on  the inestimable Jilanne Hoffman’s blog. I went immediately a-buying. A good, immersive read, not to mention a ping ping in the direction of both Carrie’s and Jillane’s blogs

People Of The Book Amazon UK
People Of The Book Amazon USA

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Graham Greene – The Ministry Of Fear

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Book Review, Espionage, Graham Greene, Second World War, The Ministry of Fear

The Ministry of Fear is Within as well as Without…….”.If one loved one feared “

Even a Greene novel written before he flowered into his middle and later period of novels about more metaphysical and existential concerns, and described by him as one of his ‘For Entertainment’ novels, is a master-class in how to combine a page turning thriller with stunning psychological nuance, interesting character, believable and immediate time and location setting, and the darker waters of ‘what it means to be human’. (which is always what I am most aware of with Greene)

The Ministry Of Fear, published in 1943, could be regarded on one level as a propaganda novel – beware, look out for ‘The Enemy Within’ and, like the equally page-turning, jolly-good-read A Gun For Hire, is a dazzling example of how to do pot-boiling with something much more substantial, and much less just formulaic, a-bubble in that pot.

This was a very pleasurable re-read for me; Greene is a writer I do return to, and can always find new, and more, to engage with, whilst sinking into the comfort of knowing the narrative journey, subsequent reads give more time to enjoy the view.

In brief, Arthur Rowe, a man with a fatal flaw – pity, an inability to bear either his own, or another’s suffering – and how this is a flaw for him (and others) will be revealed – visits, by chance a fete in war-torn London. Immediately we are in Greene-land – the complicated, thoughtful, damaged and introspective hero, walks back into the golden memory of childhood safety, the sweet remembered goodness of a golden age – and discovers this is only patina, there is no safe space. Chance, the perfidy of fate, has brought him an encounter which was never meant to be his. He wins a cake in the raffle which is somehow linked with espionage for Germany. And the whole plot proceeds, from here, tying Rowe further and further like a fly caught in a malevolent spider’s web of ‘only connect’ as the sticky threads of connection proceed for ill, rather than for benevolence.

Ministry of Information Second World War Official Collection on Wiki Commons – Fete in Russell Square, 1943

Typical Greene that plunges the reader into perfidy and betrayal, not through espionage in high places, with sophisticated protagonists, but through the most prosaic surface of little, local England, peopled with kind bobbies and paternalistic vicars.

He rips the surface away, and builds, right from the start, the creeping growth of fear, and nothing to be trusted. As a kind of comment on the world he leads us into, are small excerpts as chapter heading, quotes picked from a book by the Victorian writer Charlotte M. Yonge, called The Little Duke, which Rowe picks up second hand at the fete, as part of that romantic golden glow misremembered simple world of childhood. Yonge wrote ‘homilies’ for the young, about high ideals, simply expressed. Greene’s characters yearn to achieve those ideals, but are spotted and stained by the complexity of living in the real world, where morality is not always so clear

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man – a man who either takes tea or coffee for breakfast, a man who likes a good book and perhaps reads biography rather than fiction, a man who at a regular hour goes to bed, who tries to develop good physical habits but possibly suffers from constipation, who prefers either dogs or cats, and has certain views about politics.

It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous

This is what Greene does so superbly – makes the extraordinary ordinary, and the ordinary extraordinary.

Happiness should always be qualified by a knowledge of misery………..Knowledge was the great thing…..not abstract knowledge, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed passionate trivial human knowledge…….One can’t love humanity. One can only love people

This book positively sings with all manner of……’now I really need to reflect on this’….all delectably wrapped up in a page-turning espionage plot which positively suggests a Hitchcock noir film.

In reality, The Ministry Of Fear was turned into a film by Fritz Lang. I have not seen the film but the fact that by all accounts it had a jollier, Hollywood wrap ending completely misses the point of Greene’s book, where even the obvious wrap which we might see coming from fairly early on, is nuanced by the sour sadness of accommodation and compromise. High ideals are rarely achieved with full untarnished glitter, there is always, ‘in real’ a spot of wear and tear, a small stain which is pervasive.

A marvellous book, highly entertaining, absolutely disciplined, and solidly ‘about stuff’

The Ministry of Fear Amazon UK
The Ministry of Fear Amazon USA

Inside Llewyn Davis – Soundtrack

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Bob Dylan, Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis, Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, Stark Sands, T Bone Burnett

Sweet melancholy folk.

The music (of course!) in the Coen’s film of Inside Llewyn Davis was absolutely integral to its charm, and with images from the film spooling in my mind’s eye and music tantalisingly playing, half remembered, ditto, getting the soundtrack was a must

Oscar Isaac, on both CD and film is stellar. Though I found myself wondering what Oscar Isaac himself naturally plays and sounds like; as a clearly consummate actor, I suspect what we may have here is Llewyn Davis as musician and singer – Isaac himself may have quite different musical qualities. One of the hallmarks of the film is its loving steeping into the style of the times, both vocally and instrumentally – listening to Dave van Ronk’s playout track of Green Green Rocky Road, and the penultimate track of an unreleased studio recording of Dylan singing ‘Farewell’ in the context of the other 12 tracks shows this. There is a similar plangent, dourly tender quality to Isaac’s voice as in that early Dylan track – adding a nice little irony to the use of the Dylan at the end of the film, as a reminder of ‘then everything changed-– Llewyn Davis SOOOO close but not quite there!

I couldn’t QUITE go the full 5 star on the soundtrack, only because there are 3 tracks I skip over, as not to my ears for listening to outwith the film – the ‘joke’ Please Mr Kennedy, the very traditional old bouncy folk Roving Gambler, and The Storms Are On The Ocean (hope no one punches me for this – see the film!)

The rest are fabulous, as songs, as arrangements by the performing artists and T Bone Burnett, and as instrumental and vocal renditions.

But………I do agree with the CD sleeve note compiler that standout of many standouts is the rendition of Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) with Isaac and Marcus Mumford, who is co musical producer. This is ineffable! Isaacs darkly honeyed, anguished vocals woven with the sweeter, lighter quality of Mumford.

There are so many little teasers to performers of that time and slightly later, in this music – from the Peter, Paul and Mary of Stark Sands, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, the on-the-verge-of early Simon and Garfunkel on the Isaac, Mumford track, and the quality of an almost but not quite there early folky Dylan from Isaac himself. Stark Sands rendition of Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind is also a real delight.

The album is definitely a fuller experience if you saw the film, but pretty darned fine on its own.

Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon USA

TaraShea Nesbit – The Wives of Los Alamos It’s UK publication day!

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Book Review, TaraShea Nesbit, The Manhattan Project, The Wives Of Los Alamos

It’s publication day for this careful group consciousness account of what it was like to be part of the New Mexico Los Alamos Manhattan project community, during the Second World War, Here is my original review, written last month after receiving it as an ARC from NetGalley in digital form

The Wives Of Los Alamos Amazon UK
The Wives Of Los Alamos Amazon USA

Happy birthday and many thanks for years of pleasure!

Tags

Book Review, Happy Birthday!, Shakespeare, The Final Act of Mr Shakespeare, The Secret Life of William Shakespeare

I can’t let 23rd April go by without raising a glass*** to Saint Immortal Bard on the occasion of his birth (and death) day.

*Whilst raising that glass a few Bardic glass quotes were trawled for (courtesy of Google)

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another; (Sonnet 3)

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date; (Sonnet 22)

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass. (King Lear)

I’m sure there are many more…??

Cheekily, I want to dredge up a couple of reviews from my back catalogue, wonderful fictions both, with Will as the central character, vibrant, subtle, entertaining and profound as his plays

Firstly, Jude Morgan’s The Secret Life Of William Shakespeare, which amongst its other delights creates a real, believable relationship between the young Will and Anne Hathaway, by giving Anne real substance and persona

And secondly, combining fantastic attention to the dark and and plot obsessed Jacobean society post-Gunpowder plot, with a mature Shakespeare brought out of retirement to write a new history play, and some wonderful ‘in the rehearsal rooms’ invention is Robert Winder’s The Final Act Of Mr Shakespeare

I supped both these up with delight, gusto and absorption, and both are placed firmly on the ‘keepers’ bookshelf, destined for re-reads

;

Georgina Harding – The Solitude of Thomas Cave

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Arctic, Book Review, Georgina Harding, The Solitude of Thomas Cave

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

How would it be to choose solitude, with no certain hope of changing one’s mind? How would it be, in the end, to rely upon who you are, your skills and talents, and upon surrender to, and understanding, the implacability and indifference of the vastness of the natural world?

This is a fascinating subject to me. Most of us are so used to having our needs met by the interdependency of community; we never need to confront our deepest identity, who we are in relationship to ourselves. Only oneself as a measure of what it is to be human.

I’ve read a lot of books that are factual accounts of exploration of solitude, A Book of Silence and a relationship with the environment The Wild Places or an attempt to piece together a book about someone else’s solitude Into the Wild and there does seem to be something particularly challenging and revealing about the ‘extreme North’ both as idea and as reality. Something about the light and the unearthly clarity of deep snow, and the frozen brightness of that white and unforgiving landscape.

Harding’s book, written with a sombre, bleak descriptiveness is a fictional account of one man’s experience of ‘North’. Set in the seventeenth century, it recounts the tale of a sailor choosing to spend nearly a year in an isolated whaling station, in the far Arctic. Lack of any technology makes this particularly risky, as there is of course no certainty that the whaling ship which leaves him will itself survive the journey back to civilisation or even the return the next year to collect him. Cave is left with himself, his thoughts, his history and his ingenuity, and the experience is of course burning and refining.

A wonderful and thought provoking read, even if I couldn’t go quite to 5 star, as the final third of the book, where the wider historical perspective really kicked in, felt a little disconnected, and there was, at moments, a sensibility which felt a little ‘modern’ rather than of its time.

The Solitude Of Thomas Cave Amazon UK
The Solitude Of Thomas Cave Amazon USA

Christiane Ritter – A Woman In The Polar Night

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A Woman In The Polar Night, Arctic, Book Review, Christiane Ritter, Norway, Spitsbergen

Now we are alone for a year

I discovered after finishing this book that the author was a visual artist.  At which point the particular sensitivity and refinement of her descriptions of the far Arctic landscape, particularly detailed gradations of colour in sky, snow, ice and water made even more sense.

In 1934 Ritter, an Austrian woman, came to Svalbard (Spitsbergen) to join her husband, Hermann, a hunter trapper (the fur trade) who spent long periods of time in the Arctic plying this trade. Hermann had a deep and abiding love for the Arctic landscape and its isolation. Perhaps more modern sensibilities are rather more disturbed by the trade engaged in. I did have to take myself rather out of that distress, reading of the trapping of Arctic foxes for fur. The killing of seals and bears by hunters, for food, did not arouse the same feelings of repugnance in me.

As I am fascinated (and terrified!) by the idea of isolation in a harsh, indifferent landscape, where there is remarkably little possibility for communication with the outside world, this was always going to be an entrancing, absorbing read. The mere fact that getting close enough to these areas to continue on foot, sled, or ski must always depend on vessels being able to come close before the pack ice and freeze prevents the ship being trapped, once dropped, rescue (in earlier times) becomes an impossibility. A very isolated community of trappers and hunters, living around a day’s ski away from each other (if the weather is kindly) puts running out of supplies into a rather dangerous perspective.

Wiki Commons, topographic map of Svalbard from User:Mysid

Aspects of Christine Ritter’s story were not really touched on, but did leave me wondering – she and Hermann had a child who was left behind in Austria (age not mentioned) whilst she was away for the year.

Very little of a personal nature is revealed in this book, – for example, she discovered when she came, as arranged, to the Arctic, that she would be sharing the small and primitive hut for most of the year not just with her husband, but with a friend of his, another hunter trapper. My curiosity was aroused but not really satisfied, wanting to get some insight into the emotional connections between the 3. But Christiane makes no mention at all, even of the initial shock of finding she would not be on her own with her husband.

Christiane and Hermann Ritter, Arctic summer in Grahuken – photo from book

The outstanding relationship which develops in this book is that of Christiane with the land itself, her writing often becoming elegiac, transcendent, and devotional

The interesting introduction by Lawrence Millman points out that many books written about polar exploration or life, by male authors, often appear to have some sort of underlying theme about a sense of conflict with the landscape, about somehow mankind dominating, battling with and overcoming and subduing the environment. Christiane in many ways writes the language of a desire to be subsumed by, absorbed by, surrendered to. It is a lover’s language, not a warrior’s. And interestingly she does have anxieties and feelings for the animals being trapped, at one point even consciously befriending a young fox and trying to ensure it does not end up trapped by the hunters.

Photo of Northern Lights, Commons, from greenland__com

She even elects to stay behind in the main home hut, rather than travel on hunting with the men – in fact, all three of them are drawn to undertake further isolation for weeks or months.

 I myself stand forlornly by the water’s edge. The power of this worldwide peace takes hold of me, although my senses are unable to grasp it. And as though I were unsubstantial, no longer there, the infinite space penetrates through me and swells out, the surging of the sea passes through my being, and what was once a personal will dissolves like a small cloud against the inflexible cliffs.

 I am conscious of the immense solitude around me. There is nothing that is like me, no creature in whose aspect I might retain a consciousness of my own self, I feel that the limits of my being are being lost in this all-too-powerful nature, and for the first time I have a sense of the divine gift of companionship

I was steered towards this book by another reviewer on Amazon, who intrigued me by informing me that in some ways this book had clearly acted as a springboard for Michelle Paver, when she came to write her magnificent, chilly book, Dark Matter – there is a point where Ritter first comes to this landscape she later falls so in love with, where she hints at a brooding sense of menace and presence, which Paver works into, and works up, in her novel. She even ever so slightly changes the name of the Ritter Arctic home Grahuken, to make it into her fictitious Gruhuken.

Christiane Ritter was clearly a most remarkable, redoubtable woman. She has a mild obsession with vitamins – well who wouldn’t when you are snowbound without fresh vegetables for a year! – and it clearly served her well, she only died in 2000, at the age of 103!

A Woman In The Polar Night Amazon UK
A Woman In The Polar Night Amazon USA

The Great Beauty

Tags

Film review, Italian Film, Paolo Sorrentino, Rome, The Great Beauty, Toni Servillo

Flowers of Beautiful Emptiness

Paolo Sorrentino’s much lauded, multi award winning film about La Dolce Vita, the hedonistic, excessive, stylish – but ultimately exhausted ennui of Roman high-life is itself a feast of beautiful, empty, melancholic ‘so what’ exhaustion.

The conundrum at the heart of this, is: how can you make a film about a group of sophisticated, pretentious, self-indulgent excessive artists or, more properly, for the majority, pseudo-artists, without your own art-work being subsumed into the gorgeous soft porn, sated, over-indulged luscious skin and vision-fest you are portraying.

I was not completely certain, despite the wit in the script, the gorgeousness of the vistas and especially the stunning, stylish women, which the camera lingers lovingly over, in their often naked voluptuousness, whether what I was watching was art, or merely another excuse to show beautiful women naked, and a parade of ageing powerful men clustered like vampires in a feeding frenzy round succulent female flesh.

The central character, through whose eyes we ingest Rome’s beauty, fiddling whilst – not necessarily Rome, but life itself, burns and is destroyed, is Jep Gambardella, a 65 year old journalist, of acerbic, mordant pen. Jep is lionised by his society, he is, as he always wanted to be, a mover and a shaker, and delights in being the sort of man who attends the best and wildest and excessive gatherings, but is not only the man who attends those parties – but the man whose dismissive words can make those parties FAIL. Once, many years ago he wrote a novel which was praised high, now he makes and unmakes reputations.

The unseen presence which stalks through the film is the grim reaper; death. Although it is hearing of the death of his first love which brings existential despair up close and personal for Jep, we see through his eyes, as he plunges into the swings and roundabouts of parties, sex, and spectacle that he (and all around) are doing this to stop awareness of the knowledge that we are all on that journey to the grave.

The film swings constantly between the overindulgence of spectacle, movement, noise and distraction, and silence, emptiness, spaciousness, some kind of surrendering acceptance, as exemplified by the presence of a 103 year old nun, soon to be canonised. However, the spectacle of the lizard-faced, decrepit nun crawling in suffering penance on hands and knees up a flight of stairs as part of her spiritual, saintly journey, is no particular solace either.

The performances, (especially Toni Servillo as Gambardella) are all impeccable, the whole filmic quality of the piece is lush, wonderful, artful, but at the end I was left looking for something which I’m not certain I found – something to value, some quality of heart. In some ways, though the characters in this piece have a sophistication and finesse, and a stylish wit and brio, which makes them at least knowingly witty company, I was left with the same feeling of distaste for humankind which reading Bret Easton Ellis’s The Laws of Attraction gave me. And the point of that comparison, is that this is as partial and incomplete a view of humankind (very little that is kind, in this) as the other side unreal saccharine view of traditional Hollywood. This was a world peopled pretty well by only the stunningly beautiful or the Fellini-esque grotesque. It missed the extraordinary of ordinary itself.

As filmic spectacle, it is indeed splendid, but is it more than just a very finely lacquered mind-game to be dissected and debated. And is that enough?

The Great Beauty Amazon UK
The Great Beauty Amazon USA

James Lee Burke – The Tin Roof Blowdown

Tags

Book Review, Hurricane Katrina, James Lee Burke, New Orleans, The Tin Roof Blowdown

Bleak, dark, suffused with simmering and often righteous anger: never a comfortable read.

James Lee Burke is far from my usual reading fare, out of self-preservation really. A too deep and often immersion in this world of constant perfidy and violence, where the oppressed are for the most part so savagely handled that becoming the oppressor seems the only way out, leaves this reader too closely believing that the brutality of our species is all there is, and that the survival of kindness and compassion is an impossibility.

Yet, from rare time to time I do foray into Burke’s books, lured by the power of his writing, and the complex multifaceted layers of his characters.

Dave Robicheaux, Lee Burke’s central and continuing character across a series of Louisiana set books, presently works as a sheriff’s deputy. He is a Vietnam vet, whose experiences in that war and his own early family history have taken him into some very dark places. He is an alcoholic in recovery. His best friend, a former cop, now working for a bail bondsman, is a still-suffering alcoholic, Clete Purcell.

There are deep and sometimes potentially dangerous bonds of friendship between the two, as their shared history of violence and addiction simmers below the surface for both, erupting most often for Purcell, whilst consciously struggled with through his recovery programme, for Robicheaux, who also is supported by a strong relationship with his wife and adopted daughter. Purcell particularly strays often outside the strict letter of the law, yet there is always some basic honour in him.

The Tin Roof Blowdown has a complicated plot involving a psychopath and sexual predator, a horrific gang rape, and a burglary from someone with Mob connections. This is all played out in New Orleans whilst Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastate the area, and much of the unleashed violence and lawbreaking happens against a backdrop of aid coming too little, too late, and the poor and powerless are left defenceless.

Katrina, New Orleans, Wiki Commons

Much of the anger expressed in the book is righteous, with Robicheaux expressing his understanding that systems of governance which favour the haves, and deprive the have-nots, sow the seeds of criminality, that deprivation and lack of justice and opportunity, dysfunction in society, covert and overt racism, will only breed more of the same.

This is a strongly written, apocalyptic book and does not hold out much hope, other than the small, local bonds of kindness and understanding individuals may be lucky to find with each other, whilst outside, in the world at large, hell seems to be up and running.

The Tin Roof Blowdown Amazon UK
The Tin Roof Blowdown Amazon USA

Inside Llewyn Davis

Tags

Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Garrett Hedlund, Inside Llewyn Davis, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac

Uncomfortable, hilarious, poignant and musical is the brew

This Coen Brothers film, about the burgeoning folk scene in the early 60s had me wincing, laughing, and absorbed for its 90 minutes. The film opens in Greenwich Village in 1961 at a precise time just BEFORE Dylan burst onto the scene.

Llewyn Davis (an excellent performance by Oscar Isaac) is an utterly self-obsessed, careless, narcissistic musician. He is however a man of talent, self-belief, and creativity. And also laziness, prickliness and melancholy.

So the nub of the film is the self-obsession and belief which the artist MUST have, if they are to be putting their creative vision out there – married with the fact that the person themselves may not be particularly likeable. We (the consuming public) half forgive the often careless and badly behaved artist if their WORK touches us.

The Coens present us with this – in many ways Davis is a rather unlikeable human being, careless of everyone else’s feelings, tender of his own. At yet, there is a curious vulnerability about him which is attractive enough to allow him to use people, because they see something in that vulnerability which they want to protect, not to mention a sense that what the artist creates may be much finer than the artist himself. So, as that fineness of creation is IN the artist, this means they must, surely, be a better person than they appear to be. Well, that I think is the theory that has artists forgiven for what would be unindulged behaviour in non-artists.

Maybe we do believe, unlike what Orwell says, that an artist IS a special kind of man!

Davis stumbles through, journeying from New York to Chicago and back, in pursuit of fame and fortune, insulting people wittingly and unwittingly, coercing his way into places to stay, meals to be fed – and making at one point a terribly wrong decision around a recording session which the audience knows will sting. Davis is careless and selfish, sure, but he is also gauche and possessed of a certain gullible innocence – he both exploits and IS exploited.

I’m sure I’m not alone is also rooting for the parallel ginger cat story, one of those wonderfully real Coenesque eccentricities, which left me, as a cat fancier, wondering and worrying about one development. (can’t say more, spoiler avoider)

Llewyn Davis’ has a Dylanesque musical style and voice, and indeed Oscar Isaac has some of that intense street-waif sexiness of the young Dylan, as in the album cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and there is almost a sub-text of ‘could this be a version of Dylan’. There is a neat barbed moment around this in the film, which had me wincing and laughing in equal measure.

With a great musical trawl through, in terms of live performance and soundtrack music, this was a thoroughly enjoyable film

Other performances of note in the film are the sweet faced, sweet voiced, foul mouthed and angry character played by Carey Mulligan, John Goodman as a fairly obnoxious jazz musician and Garrett Hedlund as Johnny Five, a beat poet, in the road/Chicago section of the film.

The 40 odd minute ‘extras’ have a certain rough-cut charm, probably particularly to musicians.

I have one small criticism of the sound quality of the spoken material, which seemed unusually quiet and muttery from some of the performers, so I had to have the volume turned up beyond normal levels to properly hear much of the dialogue.

I received this DVD as a copy for review purposes from Amazon Vine UK

Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon USA