Folk music comedy has sharp-writing, spot-on music, period detail
The Coen brothers’ newest gift to cinema is set in the folk music scene of Greenwich Village in 1961, right before Bob Dylan came in and changed everything.
Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a typical folk singer/songwriter, in that only a handful of people know his name or his work. He is a dedicated artist who cares about the integrity of his music. The trouble is that folk music does not sell well, and he is forced to hop around from place to place with his guitar in tow.
When he crashes at his ex-girlfriend Jean’s (Carey Mulligan) apartment, she hands him a note with the simple words “I’m pregnant” scratched on it. Now he has to raise some money to get it “taken care of.”
He makes an ill-fated car trip to Chicago in an attempt to promote himself and get his music heard (and therefore get some much needed dough).
He hitches a ride with some friends of friends. Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund) drives, smokes a cigarette in that bad-boy James Dean way and barely says a word. Roland Turner (John Goodman, a Coen regular) is an ornery jazz musician who spouts some wonderfully profane dialogue.
The Coen brothers are clearly a pair of the greatest living filmmakers. They always make the films they want to make, and “Inside Llewyn Davis” is one of their most uncompromising films. Some of their films have the appeal to reach a wide audience, such as “Burn After Reading” and “True Grit,” but their newest film, along with ones such as “Barton Fink”and “A Serious Man,” are completely made on their own terms.
A look at a week in the life of a self-centered folk singer in a film with a dreary, washed-out look is not for most audiences. If they gave the film a chance, most would be pleasantly surprised by how funny and even moving the film is.
Even the darkest crime dramas the Coens have made have a streak of black humor running through them. “Llewyn Davis” is a melancholy film, but it is frequently hilarious, even if the laughs sting afterward.
Oscar Isaac (“Drive,” Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood”), one of those actors people recognize but cannot place by name, gives a breakthrough performance in the lead role. He does his own singing and guitar playing and finds just the right balance between making Llewyn a jerk and someone the audience cares about.
The film has a stellar supporting cast, including Justin Timberlake, whose pre-hippie look — a sweater and perfectly-trimmed beard — is funny in itself, and “Girls” cast members Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky.
The original music in the film is by T Bone Burnett, who the Coens worked with before on “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and it is so well done that it seems like it could actually come from the time period.
The period detail and the costumes are spot-on, too. The general tone of the film is beautifully drab, and it seems to be rainy or sleeting the entire running time. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel is filled with cold grays and blues that make up the terrible weather and smoky nightclubs of Llewyn’s life.
So what is the film trying to say? Many of the Coens’ films are darkly comic existential tales in which characters try, often in criminal ways, to steer their lives the way they want to but cruel fate chooses a different path.
The structure of “Llewyn Davis” is interesting because the ending circles back to the very beginning of the film. The aforementioned Bob Dylan makes a sort of appearance at the end in the background while Llewyn is being tossed into the alley for heckling an old woman giving her first performance in public.
Even the most sincere and dedicated artists sometimes do not make it. Talent does not guarantee success. Luck and fate have more to do with it than perhaps folks want to admit.