Inside Llewyn Davis

A Partially Educated Review of Inside Llewyn Davis

In which the Coen Brothers do something different, even for them.

I hate cats. Not in a "throw them in the bin" kind of way. Nor in a "set the dog on them" kind of way, although that wouldn't be successful anyway, as my dog's scared of cats. No, instead my dislike comes from how damned high and mighty they are, strutting around the place like you should drop to your knees in reverential cries of unworthiness, while actions to the contrary result in a death stare comparable to Putin's at a t.A.T.u. reunion. So, a film must be doing something right when it not only makes me like a cat, but also makes me want to take it's side. When you consider that the Coen Brothers gave us an almost (ALMOST!) justifiable shooting of a dog in No Country For Old Men, it could just be them trying to realign karma in their favour. Whatever the reason though, it's worked. A part of me now wants to adopt an abandoned ginger cat.

After releasing three excellent films and Burn After Reading in just four years, the Coen Brothers looked like they might be going a bit Woody Allen as far as regularity of releases went. However, with the exception of writing the script of Gambit, which felt more like a clearance of the brain rot they'd collected over the years à la intolerable Cruelty, things have been relatively quiet in the Coen camp and we've had an almost three-year gap between the releases of True Grit and Inside Llewyn Davis. If a three-year gap results in films like this, then I suggest they take them more frequently, because this is one of the best films the Coens have ever made.

Inside Llewyn Davis follows the titular character, played by Oscar Isaac, living homeless and penniless in New York as he attempts to put his career in the folk scene back on track, following the suicide of his songwriting partner. With little success coming his way and others doubting his ability to succeed, mainly due to his torturous lack of people skills, Davis is also informed of the very real possibility that he's impregnated his friend's wife. What we then follow is a week in Davis' life, as he becomes torn between continuing on the path he wants to, or going in the direction that others think he should.

Despite a couple of blips, you can never call a film by The Coens boring. As a result, I'm always interested to see anything they put out. In this case though, the bulk of my interest laid elsewhere, as I more wanted to see how Oscar Isaac fared in the lead role. Hardly a household name, Isaac's career has, up until this point, consisted of solid performances in not-so-solid films, some well-known (Robin Hood, Sucker Punch), others less so (10 Years). Apparently, he was in Drive, but I don't recall his performance, serving as further proof that I really do need to go back and give that film a repeat viewing. While there was nothing about his previous performances that particularly stood out as great, there was something about him that made me think he may be a better actor than the films he was in would indicate. I just couldn't put my finger on why. Here, he proves it. His performance is, first and foremost, human, operating within the Coens' quirky world, without that overcoming him. In other films, many established actors have delivered a performance that feels more like the Coens than their own. For Isaac, this is firmly his performance. It's in the other actor's that you see the more Coen-esque performances and the downside of this is that they almost entirely serve as background to Isaac's greater accomplishment. Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan are both solid, but fail to find that element that will let them linger in your memory. Everything you will remember about this film involves Isaac, who manages to differentiate himself from the others, without becoming separate from the world he inhabits. If your film's going to retain focus on one performance, it's a fine one to choose.

One fantastic performance does not prove you entirely as an actor. That's aimed at you, Sam Riley. It does, however, give you the advantage. An advantage that, if seized properly, can propel you and just about erase any past transgressions. If that sounds too idealistic to be true, look at Matthew McConaughey, a man who only avoided becoming the most annoying screen presence going by persistently wheeling out Kate Hudson as some sort of impenetrable vitriol deflector. Put a lit match next to McConaughey's prior brain-farts and you've got an atom bomb. Put them next to Isaac's and, in comparison, you'll be lucky if the things stays alight. This could the be the kick-start to greater things and, provided the performances stay as strong as this, it's an ascension I would greatly welcome.

Of course, you can't talk about a Coens' film without talking about the script. It's easy to say that a Coens script is excellent and await agreement, because it's a generally accepted fact that the Coens are masterful writers. On a bad day though, the Coens have produced some frankly awful scripts, with the aforementioned Gambit feeling flat-out lazy and Burn After Reading appearing pitifully unaware of how far it was descending into self-parody. I can accept that it must be harder to maintain quality when you've previously hit such dazzling heights as Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski, but when the Coens make a bad film, they make an absolute stinker and it's usually the result of a lacklustre script. Not so, here. Not everyone will understand why someone would want to spend their life playing folk music, but that's not the point. Anyone can relate to passion and the desire for that passion to become imbued in your existence. Funny at turns and touching at others, the script manages a deft balance between presenting the world that Davis inhabits and relating that to any member of the audience who doesn't share an immediately apparent common link.

This brings us to awards nominations or, rather, the lack of them. Every year, a film comes out that gets heaps of praise, but then gets all but ignored when it comes to award nominations. Last year it was The Master. The year before that it was Drive and before that it was Inception. This year, it's Inside Llewyn Davis (although, no Oscar nomination for Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips? REALLY?!?). There are more than a handful of great films released every year and so some are inevitably going to get missed out. My problem, however, is that American Hustle has been frequently nominated and Llewyn Davis hasn't, despite deserving it more. Hell, let's be bold. Inside Llewyn Davis deserves a Best Picture nomination more than Gravity does. The nominations have been few, but at least it's been nominated in two areas where it really does deserve it: namely cinematography and sound.

First off, the cinematography, which is beautiful. This is going to sound somewhat hyperbolic, but you'll have to take my word for it. In the club scenes, where most of the shots give us a view from the audience, you actually feel as though the screen isn't there. You are in a club, watching someone perform. I can say this with confidence, because when the song had finished, I very nearly applauded with the on-screen audience, saving myself from embarrassment at the last second when I remembered that I was actually in a fairly packed cinema. The sound is also necessary in creating this feeling. Things are kept very simple here. They don't litter the performances with sounds from the crowd, instead really focussing on the music itself and ensuring that this sounds as good as it possibly could. It must be said that, at times, performances sound closer to studio recordings, rather than live performances and this can be a little distracting but, on a technical level, they've done a masterful job. I don't think it stands the slightest chance of beating Gravity in this area and I don't know that it should, but it's nice to see the recognition in an area where it could have easily been overlooked.

While some of the ticks and twitches often attributable to the Coens are present within the background, this is a film more about one man as an embodiment of human ambition, both when striving to achieve that ambition and when falling into laziness. Davis is far from flawless, a character who makes some very poor and, at times, unlikeable decisions, thus making him all the more human. I heard someone leaving the cinema complain that they thought the film was a bit slow. If that's true, it's only because the realisation of ambition is slow and certainly not something that you could realistically show if your entire movie takes place within the same week. Sometimes, slow can be a compliment, in the same way that simplistic can and both of those could be used in relation to Inside Llewyn Davis. For me though, plain old excellent seems better.

FIVE out of five