"Explain the cat," Carey Mulligan's prickly Jean demands of Llewyn (Oscar Isaac), early on in the Coen brothers' blackly comic but heartfelt Inside Llewyn Davis. He never quite does. Ever since the film's Cannes debut last year, critics have been discussing the significance of the insta-iconic ginger moggy, which struggling folk singer Llewyn gets lumbered with in a moment of pure farce.

After spending the night on a friend's sofa, the down-and-out Llewyn accidentally locks himself out along with their cat, whose name we later discover is Ulysses. He then spends a good portion of the film trying to return it to its owners (a middle-class couple called the Gorfeins), and in the process Ulysses goes from an adorable prop to something more like a talisman.

NOTE: The following contains spoilers for Inside Llewyn Davis.





"The film doesn't really have a plot. That concerned us at one point - that's why we threw the cat in," Joel Coen joked at Cannes last year, but this is classic Coen misdirection. The cat is integral. But what does it mean?

One of the most popular theories, as eloquently espoused by The Atlantic, is that the cat is Llewyn and represents a means for the Coens to explore their protagonist's identity crisis. Meanwhile, The Guardian suggested that it's a sly in-joke, with the Coens riffing on a screenwriting trope made famous by Blake Snyder: get your audience to love a character by having them "save the cat". But the cat seems to represent something darker, the same something that makes Isaac's Llewyn a sympathetic character, despite how abrasive and self-defeating he is.

Llewyn isn't cut out to be a solo artist. The recent suicide of his musical partner Mike (voiced by Marcus Mumford), who we're given to understand was the frontman in their double act, has thrown him into a funk both professionally and emotionally. We hear Mike and Llewyn sing together on 'Fare Thee Well', and it's immediately clear from the warm, earthy sound why Llewyn worked better as one half of a whole; his voice alone is distinctly melancholic, less accessible. It's as 'Fare Thee Well' is playing that the cat escapes and Llewyn begins carrying it with him. The cat isn't Llewyn - it's Mike.



There are a couple of clues supporting this theory. The Gorfeins are the cat's owners and also seem to be the characters who knew Mike best besides Llewyn, to the point where some viewers have assumed they are Mike's parents. One of the film's most painful moments comes during dinner at their house, when Llewyn becomes furious at Mrs Gorfein mid-performance for attempting to sing Mike's part.

The cat is continually trying to run away, breaking free first in the subway car and later down Jim and Jean's fire escape, and Llewyn is continually chasing after it, trying to hold on. Sure, he feels a sense of responsibility for keeping his friends' pet alive, but there's more going on than that. After it's revealed that he accidentally took a completely different ginger cat off the street, mistaking it for the lost Ulysses, he doesn't do the obvious thing and let the new cat go. He keeps it. He takes it with him to Chicago. He's basically homeless and seems barely capable of taking care of himself, yet he's voluntarily holding onto this stray. Why?

Later, Llewyn is being quizzed by John Goodman's boorishly chatty jazz musician Roland Turner, and tells him he's "now" a solo artist. "Now?" Turner scoffs. "You used to, what, work with the cat? Every time you'd play a C major, he'd puke a hairball?" This loaded exchange takes place during an increasingly surreal and nightmarish sequence that becomes more like a descent into hell than a trip to Chicago, with Goodman and Garrett Hedlund's characters acting as spectres of death and failure. Nothing Turner says is without meaning; the suggestion that the cat is Llewyn's former partner certainly isn't.



On the final stretch of road before Chicago, where Llewyn plans to engineer a meeting with manager Budd Grossman, he finally leaves the cat behind. His goal in the Windy City is to strike out on his own once and for all, with a manager who doesn't know him only as one half of a double act. So, the cat stays behind. Mike's spirit, such as it is, stays behind, but not before the camera lingers for a long, long beat on those big, soulful eyes staring accusingly at Llewyn.

The death-haunted road trip culminates with Llewyn seemingly hitting the cat with his car on the way back to New York, having failed to woo Grossman. It limps off into the bushes, possibly to die, possibly to survive. Llewyn may be dreaming at this point; he's seen almost dozing off at the wheel. But after this scene, there's a sense that he has let something go.

The final piece of the puzzle comes in the bookending scene where Llewyn, forgiven by the Gorfeins, once again wakes up on their sofa with Ulysses the cat walking all over him. The sequence plays out exactly like the film's opening scene, until Llewyn leaves the apartment. The cat tries again to follow him, and this time he shuts the door in time to keep it inside. He severs the tie. For better or worse, he's alone.

The Coens were never going to write a scene where a character expressly tells Llewyn that he "has to let Mike go", or have him finally break down in a moment of third act catharsis. Instead, the entire film takes place in the largely unspoken shadow of death, with Isaac's soulful performance making it quietly clear just how deeply the loss has crippled him. The cat, which should by all rights have become this year's Uggie, is one more subtle, idiosyncratic tool with which the Coens tell a story that is, at its core, about loss.

In other words, yes, the cat is Marcus Mumford.

Watch Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan discussing Inside Llewyn Davis with Digital Spy below:

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