"Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013)

Inside Llewyn Davis feels like it's designed to get an initial reception to another earlier musical: Nashville. There will be voices who say Inside Llewyn Davis is mean-spirited and unsympathetic, and that it's not entirely accurate about the time and place it's depicting. Firstly, the Coen Brother's are sympathetic. They've simply set their focuses on a character, failing folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), who is highly unlikable. Secondly, the Coen's eschew period accuracy for emotional and tonal accuracy. The 1960's Greenich Village folk scene is textured so it feels right rather than looks right. For their latest film, the Coen Brothers look back to O' Brother Where Art Though?, borrowing its folk music flavorings and Odyssey-inspired storytelling, but stripping away the humorous romp nature. Inside Llewyn Davis is a film spiked with bitterness around every corner. Llewyn is living from gig to gig, and crashing on the couch of whoever he hasn't currently pissed off. And he tends to do a lot of pissing people off. Llewyn is somewhat of an ass, and a whole lot of a narcissist. He's failed to make a name for himself, and he keeps fighting for artistic integrity over commercial success. He's had children by two woman, both of whom want nothing to do with the guy. He can't even strike up a proper friendship with a cat, two of which he loses on separate occasions. But lingering over all of this is the fact that Llewyn's singing partner Mike Trimlin recently committed suicide. From what we pick up about his musical better half, Mike was the kind of individual who, in a more conventional Hollywood film, would make for a better leading man. Mike was a happy, go-getting, far less curmudgeonly dude, and Llewyn is an incomplete person without him. Lllewyn was always a dick, but circumstances have served to heighten his unpleasantness. Like many Coen films, Llewn Davis often plays like one big cosmic joke is being performed at Llewyn's expense. Llewyn can't catch a break: He's essentially homeless (and in the dead of winter, without a winter coat), he's never going to make it big in the music industry, and the woman he (possibly) loves, Jean (Carey Mulligan), despises him, is married and wants to terminate her pregnancy (of what is likely his child). Actually, this isn't completely true: Llewyn is given many, many chances to save himself and his career but he denies them on principles of integrity and honor -- in that sense, there will never truly be a break for him. Yet there's also the film's excellent music. Llewyn at one point attempts to win over a successful music producer so that he might be his manager, and after hearing him play a song, the man replies, "You just don't connect". It's a savage irony. Llewyn absolutely connects: he connects with us. When Llewyn sings, we forget he's an ass; in those moments, he is only human. When he's singing, he exposes his bleeding heart. Like Nashville, the songs Llewyn sings are about himself -- it's the only form of communication where he makes sense and doesn't piss off someone.

★★★