" But, what a joy to hear the ballad "Queen Jane" sung with great integrity as an audition piece. Few others would have chosen it. And that, I suppose, is what makes the film, and its central character, stand out. Say what you like about the film, but you do have to admit that the Cohen Brothers really do know how to make a film."

Mike - it occurred to me the other day that the script for the movie is actually pretty clever, when you think about the subject matter of that song in the context of the character's situation (needing to pay for a abortion). There's a bathos in that his performance is immediately undercut by Grossman's "I don't hear much money here".

It parallels the moment where he performs 'Shoals of Herring' to another older man, his dad. His performance is again bathetically undercut, by his dad pooing himself. I wonder, also, if the historical inaccuracy (he can't have sung 'Shoals of Herring' to his dad as a child, cos it's not a trad folk song, it was written by Ewan McColl) is a very esoteric bit of irony on the Coens' part. (His dad's soiling himself itself echoes, rather literally, the accusation flung at him earlier that everything he touches turns to shit.)

It struck me there were further ironies in the film related to the choice of songs, in that the film opens and closes with him singing about how he's "been all 'round this world" when actually he was frustrated in trying to do just that due to his own incompetence (he accidentally lost his merchant seaman papers). The closest he gets is getting his feet wet in Chicago.

That the cat is called Ulysses, an exceedingly well-travelled sailor, is also ironic. The Coens do so love heaping indignity upon indignity on their characters...

I wasn't so convinced by the 'circularity' brought in at the end; it seemed a bit over the top. Fine, have him crashing in the spare room of the same apartment, but the repeat punching from the stranger just seemed clumsy and out-of-place.