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"  At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking that the hipster phenomenon has been over for a long time. Maybe it ended in 2010, when n+1 magazine published an autopsy, What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. Or maybe it was in 2008, when Adbusters dubbed the hipster &amp;quot;The Dead End of Western Civilization.&amp;quot; Or maybe it was in 2006, when The Onion ran its famous piece titled, &amp;quot;Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other &amp;#039;Hipster.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Much like the idea of &amp;quot;the American Dream&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;national innocence,&amp;quot; hipsterism dies all the time, but is constantly reborn so that it can die again. Gestures of cool are co-opted and drained of their significance by poseurs and consumerism, until new gestures emerge in their place, only to suffer the same fate. The cycles are so utterly predictable that by now you might think nothing new could possibly be said on the subject.  You would be wrong. Because the Coen brothers&amp;#039; Inside Llewyn Davis, out this weekend, has taken an entirely fresh perspective on the hipster \u2014 the most surprising possible perspective, in a way. Inside Llewyn Davis is a film about the hipster as hero. Of course, Llewyn Davis, the film&amp;#039;s titular character, is never called a hipster. The word wouldn&amp;#039;t mean to him what it means to us, anyway. But that&amp;#039;s what he is. And it goes beyond the simple external traits \u2014 the beard, the couch-surfing, the furrowed, anxious brow. Like the current iteration of hipsters, with their knitting and their love of fonts, Llewyn Davis loves an antique art form from which he tries to earn a living, but simply cannot. The details of his day-to-day existence are familiar to residents of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, today \u2014 bumming rides, organizing the details of a day job, trying to find money to pay for a girlfriend&amp;#039;s abortion, and generally alienating everyone who&amp;#039;s ever loved him. I&amp;#039;ve known a dozen guys who spent their early twenties doing exactly that. From the beginning, the Coens have always been as much commentators on American pop culture as creators of it. Even their straightest movies, like No Country for Old Men or Miller&amp;#039;s Crossing, were aboutWesterns and gangster movies as much as they were Westerns and gangster movies. Inside Llewyn Davis continues that tradition. It takes the form of the musical biopic, but unlike all other musical biopics, it&amp;#039;s about a loser. The sense of failure in the filmis palpable and omnipresent. Davis goes to Chicago to audition for a music producer, and plays an old English ballad about the death of Queen Jane. The producer looks at him and says, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t see any money here.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s basically Davis&amp;#039;s whole life. One of the Coen brothers&amp;#039; most brilliant decisions was casting Justin Timberlake as Davis&amp;#039;s folk-singing friend. He provides perfect contrast. It is amazing to see him sing the old tune &amp;quot;500 Miles.&amp;quot; The whole movie stands still. From the moment he opens his mouth, you don&amp;#039;t want to hear anything else. Davis is a good singer, and an honest one, but he&amp;#039;s not a star and will never be. At the end of the movie, Bob Dylan goes on stage at the Gaslight and he literally glows, while Davis walks away into the shadows. Davis is a loser, but he is also a hero. The reason is the music. Hipsters are famously searching for authenticity, which they find sometimes in being as inauthentic as possible (going to the mall ironically, etc.). But the thing about folk music is that it is genuinely, unimpeachably authentic. Because folk songs have no authors and emerge from nowhere, they have no pose; they possess no narcissism. They are beyond personal expression. They are also beyond critical judgment. You cannot articulate any meaningful opinion about a song like &amp;quot;Green Green Rocky Road.&amp;quot; You can hate it but you can&amp;#039;t judge it. It works. The song either works for you or it doesn&amp;#039;t. You cannot enjoy it ironically. The honesty of the music saves Llewyn Davis. Nothing works out for him. Eventually he ruins his relationships with everyone who can help him. At one point Davis is talking to his sister, who is telling him what he already knows he has to do: take a job in the merchant marine and give up show business. &amp;quot;Should I be like dad and just exist?&amp;quot; he asks her. Anything but that. Davis wants to mean something. He wants to touch something real. And even though he never becomes famous, even though he never makes any money, he did mean something. He meant something to Bob Dylan. That&amp;#039;s a victory in life, and not the smallest either. There has always been an inherent classism in anti-hipsterism. Hipsters are mostly poor young men who move from smaller towns to big towns and want to make art. They don&amp;#039;t want to merely exist. That&amp;#039;s why so many hate them: They&amp;#039;re unsatisfied and they won&amp;#039;t stand still. But those are also the people who make things happen, the restless and the uncomfortable. Inside Llewyn Davis is a break for them at long last. Only the Coens are cool enough to make us give hipsters another look, and it&amp;#039;s a look worth taking. Maybe they&amp;#039;re more than skinny jeans. PLUS: 7 Famous Movie Hipster Quotes &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Read More Stephen Marche on The Culture Blog &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. 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<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a26247/inside-llewyn-davis-hipsters/>