Melancholy gem, Coen style
FILM REVIEW by Adam Kamien. CBS Films recently took out two full-page “For Your Consideration” advertisements in The New York Times to spruik the awards bona fides of its latest Coen brothers hit Inside Llewyn Davis.
The first ad featured a lone tweet from Times reviewer A. O. Scott, which read: “I’m going to listen to the Llewyn Davis album again. Fare thee well, my honeys.” The post referred to a song from the film.
The other ad listed the names of more than 400 critics who called the film one of the best of the year.
What does it all mean? CBS has deep pockets and the Oscars statuette underneath any film’s logo moves units. But where does the film sit in Ethan and Joel Coen’s prolific and consistently brilliant canon?
The film follows down-on-his-luck folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), who is trying to make his way in a crowded marketplace. In an era before Dylan, novelty acts crowd the stages and coffee houses of early 1960s Greenwich Village, which is painstakingly and thrillingly recreated.
Davis is a talented and truthful artist, who is a feature at open mic nights and is still angry at the world over the death of his friend and music partner. He sleeps on a different couch most nights, mistreats nearly everyone who cares about him and is singularly focused on the success he believes is owed him by the universe.
He has a habit of accidentally impregnating women, including Jean (Carey Mulligan), who is married to and sings with Davis’ friend Jim (Justin Timberlake) and drunkenly heckles acts at the Gaslight Cafe. He eventually hitches a ride to Chicago, the home of producer Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), where he plans to pitch his record.
The latest in a parade of Coen brothers anti-hero ne’er-do-wells, Isaac’s Davis is simultaneously on a Homeric odyssey and utterly inert.
The Coens play his interactions with the freaks and geeks he meets along the way – John Goodman’s heroin-addled jazz singer is a delight – for laughs and pathos and there are plenty of both in this melancholy fable.
In gems such as Barton Fink or O Brother Where Art Thou, comparable for their Ulysses-inspired themes, there is an easy profundity, a feeling or a notion that is implicit in the set up, but not inspired by it.
There are moments such as these dotted throughout Inside Llewyn Davis, but there are also less successful set pieces that exhibit a distracting sense of striving.
Overwhelmingly though, Inside Llewyn Davis is a bleakly funny, affecting film with excellent performances and an even better aesthetic.
If recent history is anything to go by (Fargo won two Oscars and No Country For Old men four), the Coens could again be toast of Tinsel Town in 2014.
Inside Llewyn Davis is currently screening.
PHOTO of Oscar Isaac (left) and Justin Timberlake in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis.
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