Inside Llewyn Davis

At some point of this the folk singer we've been following is stranded at night by the side of the road in a car with possibly a dead man and a cat, another man has just been arrested by police for not much of a reason. He gets out to hitch a ride and there's only a cold, indifferent night with strangers in their cars just going about.

This is the worldview the Coens have been prodding, sometimes for a laugh, sometimes not. I can't fault them, it does seem to be inexplicably cold out there some nights. They're thinkers first of all, intellectuals, so it stings them more so they try to think up ways of mocking that thinker who is stung by the cold to amuse themselves and pass the night.

So this is what they give us here. A joyless man for no particular reason, who plays decent music that people enjoy or not for no particular reason, who the universe has turned against. The Coens don't pretend to have any particular answer either of why this is, why the misery. It might have something to do with having lost a friend, something to do with not having learned to be simply grateful for a small thing. It might have something to do with something he did, the initial beating up in the alley is there to insert this. Sometimes it's just something that happens as random as a cat deciding to step out of the door and the door closing before you can put it back in. Most of the time it all kind of snowballs together.

It's a noir device (the beating - cat) bundling guilt with chance so we'll end up with a clueless schmuck whose own contribution to the nightmare is inextricable from the mechanics of the world. The Coens have mastered noir so they trot it here with ease: the more this anti-Dude fails to ease into life the more noir anomaly appears around him.

Of course the whole point is that it's not such a bad setup; people let him crash in their apartment, a friend finds him a paying gig, somehow he ends up on a car to Chicago where he's offered a job. It's not great either, but somewhere in there is a pretty decent life it could all amount to, provided he settles for less than his dream. (This means here a dream the self is attached to). I saw this after a documentary on backup singers, all of them profoundly troubled for having settled for less, all of them nonetheless happy to be able to do their music.

Still, 'The incredible journey', seen on the Disney poster, may in the end amount to no more than an instinctive drive through miles of wilderness. The Coens are cold here even for their standards. I wouldn't be surprised to find it was Ethan, the more introverted of the two, ruminating on a meaningless art without his partner.

Is there a way out in the end? Here's the trickiest part, especially for an intelligent mind. You can't just kid yourself with any other happiness like Hollywood has done since Chaplin. You know it has to be invented to some degree, the point of going on, yet truthful. Nothing here. More music, a reflection. It's the emptiest part of the film as if they didn't know themselves what to construct to put him back on stage. Visually transcending was never their forte anyway. They merely end up explaining the wonderful noir ambiguity of that first beating.

Still they are some of the most dependable craftsmen we have and in the broader Coen cosmos this sketches its own space.

Like almost everyone who loved or hated this film, I do generally like the Coen brothers and am not against having to do work to enjoy and appreciate a film. This is an important thing to say because Inside Llewyn Davis is certainly not a film to come to as a casual viewer just looking to kill a few hours – not as a snobby thing of "you'll not appreciate it" but just a reality that the film does almost nothing to help the viewer. The plot involves struggling folk musician Llewyn Davis in the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s; he is not particularly commercial, is irresponsible, downbeat and cannot look after others or even the cat belonging to others. We follow him over the course of a week which will change his life and see the world around him change too.

I really did want to like this film because at times there is a certain beauty to it in the pained reality of its lead character, his situation and his gradual realization of where his life is and where it is going. Unfortunately this is generally spread very thin and instead of having a structure that supports this, we instead get an episodic approach that makes the "week" feel like months, sees characters just come and go whether we have an interest in them or not and generally doesn't allow you to do more than grasp at metaphors which drift by – usually resulting in the people who love the film the most being those who brought a lot of their own selves to the table, leaving us who look to the film to at least help, feeling left out in the cold and even a little bored.

The music is beautiful when it comes and the cinematography is excellent as it captures and shapes the feel of the film and the character – it is bleak to look at for sure, but it is suitable and effective for what the film is. The same could be said of Isaac's performance because it is what the film needs him to do but the downside is that it isn't really what the viewer needs him to do. His personal journey (physical and emotional) is made harder b the coldness of his character – there is really not much to grab hold of here and he is generally difficult. As often is the case with the Coens, we have characters drifting though the story usually in a colorful fashion – the times it has worked in other films has been frequent but here I didn't think it did at all, with nobody seeming to add much. As writers of the material and directors of their cast the "blame" (depending on your view) belongs with the Coens as they have made this film very difficult to get into.

Full of supposed metaphors and with a sadness which is put in the distance look of its title character rather than in his heart or in the audience's line of sight, the film drifts along with a general sense of sadness and change which always interested me but just seemed deliberately out of reach and distant. I'm sure if you "get it" then it is a film to adore, but for me it just didn't work at all.

This is the first time I've felt compelled to write a review for on IMDb. There are only a few movies in history that have impacted me as much.

The first time I saw Inside Llewyn Davis, it left me feeling empty and confused. While I appreciated the music, the acting, and the cinematography, I couldn't understand why anyone would love this movie (and I am a huge Coen fan). After all, it's just scene after scene of a jerk getting beaten up by life with no real plot progression and no real reason to care about any of the characters.

I then came across the movie again on TV and decided to give it another chance.

After this second viewing, the movie's themes connected with me in a big way. After my third and fourth viewing, it shook me to my core.

This movie is almost too realistic. It follows none of the conventional "rules" and there is no winner or hero. There's no real drama. There's no "silver lining". There's only struggle. And then acceptance.

For every one Bob Dylan there are myriad Llewyn Davis'. Really talented musicians and artists that work really hard and simply don't catch the lucky break. People go under the radar, under-appreciated and overlooked. People that never make it big and therefore question whether they should be doing it at all.

This is a film for the everyday folk; a beautiful empathetic look at art, music, and everyday struggle.

"If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it's a folk song."

The Coen brothers have worked together over the past couple of decades delivering some inspiring work. Their films are extremely varied (ranging from dark comedies to westerns or thrillers) and that is why people rank their films so differently according to their own genre preferences. What these films tend to have in common is that they focus on an unfortunate main character (the Coen brothers don't seem to be too interested in successful characters) and they also include a lot of quirky characters. The Coens are also great at writing interesting characters that despite being unpleasant at times still capture our attention, and they also include a lot of dark and sharp humor. Inside Llewyn Davis is one of those films where we are forced to follow an unpleasant guy in the course of a week and somehow hope he recovers and achieves his goal. This is a film that you probably enjoy more when you think about it once it's over or on a rewatch because it's philosophical and sad, but rewarding none the less if you stick through it. It is also open to many readings and interpretations. You can think of this as being an honest film about someone who doesn't achieve his dreams. We've been saturated with so many films that focus on following our dreams and never giving up on them, but it is rare to see a film focusing on someone who doesn't achieve them. Like Llewyn, we sometimes throw away other possibilities for success because we are too blinded on pursuing our own thing. That is exactly what happens here (and in this way it differs from A Serious Man where the main character suffers misfortune from things that he can't control). Llewyn could've listened and taken good advice, but he's so narcissistic and blinded by his own ambition that he misses several good opportunities. Another way you can read this film, and this is the one that worked best for me, is that Llewyn is learning to cope with the loss of his partner. He was a better singer when he wasn't on his own and now that he has lost his partner he doesn't seem to know what to do next. He is a tortured artist struggling to cope with grief. It's as if the Coens were admitting that they wouldn't know how to make films without each other. They inspire one another and that is where their success relies. Perhaps if something would happen to one of them they would feel like Llewyn, lost and unable to move on. This is just brilliant filmmaking and the Coens prove once again that they are on top of their game.

The film takes place in the course of one week as we follow a struggling folk singer named Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaacs) across Greenwich Village in the winter of 1961. He has recently released a solo album that isn't selling. With no money and no apartment, Llewyn spends his days jumping from couch to couch at friends houses while performing small gigs at local Cafes. One of the places he crashes in is at fellow musicians, Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean's (Carey Mulligan) apartment. Llewyn isn't really a guy anyone wants to be around much, but he continues to pursue his dream of becoming a solo artist. In a way he's his own worst enemy as many of the obstacles he faces are his own doing.

I'm not a fan of depressing films, but somehow the Coens captured my attention through their smart script and beautifully constructed film. The gray cinematography is gorgeous and really sets the melancholic tone of the film. Somehow despite not liking Llewyn, Isaacs manages to portray his character so well that we do root for him and want him to succeed. It's an impressive film that succeeds thanks to Isaacs heartfelt performance. We also get to meet some of the quirky characters that the Coens always include in their films. John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund were the chosen ones this time around and they both added the dark humor in this otherwise sad and melancholic film. The soundtrack is also a lot of fun to listen too and Isaacs has a great voice.

Inside Llewyn Davis is an intimate, well-executed, and honest slice of life. It features a humanistic, heartfelt performance by Oscar Isaac as the titular folk singer, arresting cinematography, and a sharp, tight-fisted script by the Coen brothers, who also directed.

It's Greenwich Village in the early sixties, when folk music was either coming into its own or ready to be usurped by a more mainstream genre. Llewyn has no home, drifting from gig to gig and crashing on couch after couch as a matter of design; is vagrancy is his life's plan. Llewyn is at turns a noble soul who exists for the sake of making the music he wants to make and a resentful twerp who mooches off friends just to sustain his unsustainable lifestyle.

The movie is only somewhat linear, with closing scenes mirroring opening scenes, and it is told entirely from Llewyn's point of view. The Coen brothers masterfully show us not only Llewyn's perspective but also an outside perspective; this allows us to feel both empathy and loathing toward him.

Llewyn is nothing if not complex. The movie does a terrific job of avoiding the usual clichés, such as a down-on-his-luck musician catching a lucky break, or a bitter man having a quick change of heart. It's not that Llewyn is constantly sneering at everyone, holding his poverty up as both a shield and a trophy, it's that he is so multilayered that when he does a kind act or offers some praise or thanks, we don't feel that his doing so is in any way out of character. Llewyn is a self-tortured soul, but unlike caricatures of wandering folkies, he is at his center a realist, albeit a prideful one.

During his travels and travails, Llewyn encounters people ranging from the genuine (his singing friends Jim and Jean, played by Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan) to the absurd (a rotund, blustery John Goodman). Oh, and a cat that travels with Llewyn - at least until he can get him or her back to the owner. The encounters with the genuine folks feel just as normal as if you or I encountered them; those with the more absurd of the lot feel perfectly surreal, and when they do end one almost wonders if we've all imagined the encounters through Llewyn himself.

The music is beautiful and moving. Isaac himself performs Llewyn's songs, with a sweet, vulnerable voice that offers a touch of soul to Llewyn's otherwise-bleak surroundings. When Llewyn is really on, you can feel his pain leap right off the screen into your brain; when he appears to be going through the motions and not singing from his heart, you can feel the lack of depth that his intended audience also feels. Isaac is just flat-out terrific.

Ultimately, it is Isaac and the music that push this film into the territory of great cinema. The story itself is stark, moody, unyielding - just like a New York City winter, really. And the movie, like Llewyn's own life, appears to have no point - except to illustrate just how pointless Llewyn is making his life, through his stubborn marriage to his craft and a desire to stay uprooted