Thursday, July 7, 2016

Inside Llewyn Davis

I love this review so much I'm not waiting to post it in order of writing. -ed.

Between 'action' and 'cut', that's mine. No matter how big the production is, that's still my space. That's a sacred place.” – Oscar Isaac


Jerzy Grotowski, the Polish theorist, used the term, The Holy Actor, so then it could be said, the holy actor is in a sacred place. In what ways is art hallowed? Grotowski takes an insightful stab at that question:

Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art? Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and repeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance or lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves...art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

Be it theatre, film, music, writing, art… this is the divine nature of the pursuit. Creation. But the art is just the (bi)product. The creation is within; it’s the continual (re)discovery through observation and self-examination, which, if done with real intent, discards the façade, until the true self emerges. The legend of Michelangelo’s artistry has it correct, “You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.”


The beauty of art is that it’s a shared experience, so as artists are chipping away, I get to chip too. The more I allow others' creations to affect me, the more fully me I become, Inside. After all, life is art, or at least it can be if it's lived bravely and in wonder. And, because this movie touches on all these aspects, it fills me full with that "blaze of light."