Is Llewyn Davis a loser?

* Contains spoilers. Sorry.

The Coen brothers' latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, is about a lush-bearded folk singer, played by Oscar Isaac - who looks a lot like British actor and folky Stephen Mangan - in Greenwich Village, New York, in the early 60s. The tale is reputedly based on the life of Dave Van Ronk, who released a similarly named album, Inside Dave Van Ronk, at around this time. And the movie is a beautiful thing: majestically shot, well told and provoking. In particular it invites the question of whether Davis is a loser, and thus also, slightly uncomfortably, whether we are ourselves losers?

I read this review, which takes a very clear line on the question, before seeing the movie at the Genesis in Mile End and thought about it again as I left the cinema because it wasn't as clear cut as the Indy had led me to expect. In the Guardian Peter Bradshaw took a slightly more forgiving approach and while picking up on telling details - the different meanings that a box of unsold records (or books) have to their originator and everyone else - Bradshaw's take on the central question seems to me to be the wrong one. Bradshaw thinks the central question is "Is Davis any good?" when we all know that completely depends on your musical taste.

So, while encouraging you to go and see the film, because it's terrific and has been overlooked by the Oscars and its attending publicity (probably because it's unusually downbeat), I'm going to do a list of pros and cons. Sometimes a list helps.

If the answer to the question "Is Llewyn Davis a loser" is yes, then it would be because

* He, self-defeatingly, turns down a clear opportunity to try out for a new band when a Chicago agent, played by F Murray Abraham - whom he has gone on a desperate road trip to meet in exactly the hope that an opportunity would present itself - offers it to him.
* He plays an underwhelming, rather twee song to the aforementioned agent, when the final couple of scenes demonstrate that he's capable of better.
* He has a sourness about him that is unattractive unless you respond to the urge to fix people.
* He clearly - judging by his ongoing relationship with an abortionist - struggles with using a condom.
* He signs away his royalty rights to an upbeat song that turns out to be a hit.
* He is rude about an elderly female folk singer, which leads her husband to beat him up in the opening and closing scenes of the film.

However, the great thing about this film - one of them, anyway - is that all of the above happen for perfectly understandable reasons that force you to ask: would I have behaved any differently? So

* He turns down the audition because he's had a musical partner already, a friend who committed suicide, and this leads him to want to avoid partnering up again.
* The best music in the film comes from the period of Davis's life when he was with his dead friend, so he plays newer, more downbeat material at the audition instead.
* His "sourness" is completely understandable in the context of this bereavement. He is depressed. That's all: a small thing and a big one.
* It materialises that of the two girlfriends who have required the attention of an abortionist, one of them kept his child after all, while the most recent - Jean, played by Carey Mulligan, the real-life wife of Marcus Mumford - turns out to have slept with at least one other man behind the back of her boyfriend Jim - played by Justin Timberlake. While this does not nullify Davis's responsibility in the matter - it could still be his baby - it does undermine her stated reason for hating him (which helps us form a view of him early on), which is that if he hadn't been a loser who slept with other people's girlfriends, her baby would definitely have been Timberlake's. Hmm.
* He signs away the royalty rights because he needs cash in hand to pay for the abortion.
* And finally, while being rude to another, less successful musician is reprehensible, the context is that he has just discovered that the guy who runs the folk club has slept with Jean. His outburst is a direct result of this and begins with a pointed heckle, asking how the elderly lady got the gig (since the folk club guy has just said if people want to play at his club this is what it takes).

Other things that mitigate Davis's loser status include

* This is about one week in his life and we've all had bad weeks
* We can't all be Bob Dylan, whose character appears in the background to one of the final scenes. In fact, to set the bar that high denotes a childish, black-and-white view of the world: Dylan is possibly the most successful musician who has ever lived.
* People clearly like Davis. Women sleep with him and he has friends, enough to support his couch-surfing lifestyle.
* When we see Davis working in a studio he cooperates beautifully, does exactly what he's asked and is involved in producing a successful record.
* He takes his responsibilities - to his girlfriends, his friends and their cats (I'm not going to explain that, you have to go see it) - seriously.

But most of all, the reason why Llewyn Davis is a hero of sorts is because he is giving it a go. A lot of people would have allowed themselves to be dragged under by the suicide of their musical partner. Yet Davis, despite being seriously depressed, has got back in the saddle and perseveres: even when it looks as if he may have to leave the music industry he immediately sets about finding another job.

Defining someone as a loser when most of the bad stuff that happens to them is not of their own making is to ignore that success is mostly about turning up.

The losers are those who never try. Llewyn Davis is a survivor - which, in the grand scheme of things, is right at the top of the tree.

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Stephen Mangan at the Cambridge folk festival

There was something about the actor Stephen Mangan that had been bothering me since I saw Green Wing on television. Then when Episodes started on BBC Two, in which he appeared as a Hollywood screenwriter alongside Matt Le Blanc of Friends and Tamsin Greig of The Archers - and which I loved - it started to become seriously problematic.

You see, when I first watched him on TV I thought he was more famous than he was - kind of the opposite of that thing when you see someone from the telly in the street and start to say "hello" before you realise your mistake.

The suspicion crept up on me that we'd met.

There was this weird, fuzzy memory of an afternoon spent in Dublin in January 1995, where I was doing work experience. He was sitting, talking very fast in someone's flat - his own? - and was in the company of two other people, one of whom was on my newspaper course and is now a very well-known journalist. In fact, he's editor of The Times. I told you it was a weird memory. 

So when there was a sudden downpour on Sunday at the Cambridge folk festival and I retreated into a tent only to find that the he was in there too, the responsible course of action was to ask, even if it laid me open to the possibility of discovering that I was losing it...

"Yes, that was me," he said, looking quite surprised, before adding that it was nice to see me again, thus demonstrating that he has good manners, since I know perfectly well that if I hadn't seen him on television in the intervening 17 years I probably wouldn't remember him either...

However, it was such a relief to find that my mind hadn't been playing tricks on me that I had to go and sit down for a little while before returning to suggest that since it was clearly going to rain for a long time would it be OK if I interviewed him? And since he was well-mannered (and trapped) he agreed.

It turned out he was there because he made a documentary, along the lines of reclaiming a forgotten love, about playing with Richard Thompson for Sky Arts last year. The marginalised object of desire was folk music. This year the channel, which media sponsors the Cambridge folk festival, had invited him back to be interviewed. He was also doing a guitar workshop with Martin Simpson and babysitting Simpson's daughter, who seemed very sweet.

Mangan swore faithfully that he wouldn't say anything interesting to Sky, leaving the field clear for me.

"I don't know why I like folk music," he said, "because my wife doesn't like it and my friends don't like it and it makes me an outcast in my own circle. But I'm from County Mayo in Ireland and parties at our house involved carpets and rugs being pushed back.

"The process of discovering folk was a lucky one that started in the late 80s and early 90s with John Martyn and Nick Drake, then had me stumbling from one thing to another. I went to America for a year when I was 18 and someone gave me a list of things to listen to. I started with Richard Thompson.

"Then in my early 30s I got into the hard stuff: Nic Jones and Dick Gaughan. But there's this feeling that because I don't have that many mates who are into it I'm like Uri Gagarin, heading out into the void. I'm here to make some friends who like folk music."

He took a bit of a conversational detour enthusiastically to praise Fionn Regan's song Dogwood Blossom, from the soundtrack of This is England.

"For some reason it speaks to me: maybe because I have a strong melancholy streak. I like depressing music but I'm an optimist who also likes storytelling. My wife is the opposite - perhaps we complement each other in this respect. She's a pessimist who likes dance music.

"So for a long time in our house folk was a four letter word that I dare not utter. It was desperately uncool - maybe it still is, but I don't care. Eventually you have to face up to who you are and I'm a folky.

"But I'm a folky with two young children and I'm in a play at the moment that's on nearly every evening," - Birthday at the Royal Court, in which he plays a pregnant man - "so I don't get to see films, plays or gigs apart from the ones I'm actually in. When I was asked, I jumped at the chance to come here again. I love nothing better than to bring myself to the point of vomiting with nerves in the company of Richard Thompson." Not that he'd have to do that this time around...

But standing on stage is what he does for a living. Why would singing with Richard Thompson make him nervous?

"If we were doing Othello it would be fun. In fact, I think Richard should give us his Othello at some point. But there's something very exposing about singing. The music is dictating to you - the song is its own lyric. Whereas with acting you're in control.

"Singing is the most popular art form in the world but it's totally about emotion, so it's very revealing. You're expressing something about what it is to be a human being in a very pure way. Which makes it all the weirder that I'd choose to stand on a stage and sing one of the most famous songs ever written - Who Knows Where the Time Goes - while the audience nudges each other and remarks that I look the donkey out of Shrek.

"But it's good to do things every once in a while that make you want to shit yourself with fear."

Why? Most people go out of their way to avoid that.

"It makes you feel alive - it was an amazing thing. I stood there at the side of the stage and heard Richard Thompson do one of the best sets he'd ever done and then say at the end of it 'And here's Stephen Mangan'."

Despite being from County Mayo, Mangan has one of those Irish accents that doesn't really sound like an Irish accent. Dick Gaughan, on the other hand, has some fairly pungent left-wing views. I wondered whether he was comfortable with that?

"Yes, I'm quite a lefty. it's hard not to be when you're an actor because you're dealing with people. They're your bread and butter, so you have to try and understand them."

I'm pretty sure Adolph Hitler thought he understood people.

"Yes, but I don't think Adolph Hitler thought of people as people. As an actor you are mainly about people and community, and what makes people tick. I always viewed left-wing politics as having a compassion to it: I deal with the fact that kings and dustmen are all on a level, they're all human beings. For my purposes I can't look at them from a status point of view. And once you're looking at everyone in the same way you're coming from an egalitarian point of view."

A bit of probing finds that he doesn't like Mumford & Sons and when I asked about Bellowhead - whom I love - he changed the subject. "Show of Hands. They're good. I just had a tweet from the Shrewsbury festival asking whether I'd like to go along this year because Richard Thompson is going to be there, so maybe I'll get to meet them.

"After the last time, Richard invited me to sing with him again in a general kind of a way. So for a while I toyed with the idea of turning up every time he played and saying brightly 'I'm here to do my song'. Now I'm thinking of faking an emergency appendectomy so I can go to Shrewsbury. We're going to be on a family holiday in Wiltshire at the time, which isn't too far away."

So if you're at Shrewsbury and you see Stephen Mangan, be nice to him. He's there to make some folky friends.

* You can buy tickets to see him in Birthday at the Royal Court here.

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