"If you ask me, I could write a book about Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis. I say that about each new Coen brothers movie (and, yes, I know Rodgers & Hart’s 1940 ‘I Can Write a Book’ is not a folk song), but in this case I use the phrase to point out that it’s a movie that lends itself to considerable rumination and explication (and appreciation), which is probably easier to do at book-length than in just a few paragraphs. But here goes:
“Inside Llewyn Davis is the only 2013 movie that I’ve watched more than twice. I think it’s been three or four times now. It’s certainly lovely to look at, while appropriately chilly with its moody blacks, blues, browns and greys (thanks, Bruno Delbonnel and Peter Doyle). The music (whether sung — always live — by the title character, Oscar Isaac, or Justin Timberlake or Carey Mulligan) is hauntingly gorgeous and sometimes so unspeakably haunting it raises goosebumps — which is often the case when the Coens work with frequent collaborators Carter Burwell and T Bone Burnett. And though I wouldn’t call it a flat-out comedy (like, say, The Big Lebowski or O Brother Where Art Thou?), it’s occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, especially when John Goodman or F. Murray Abraham are on the screen.
“It’s all very loosely based on The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the posthumously published 2005 memoir by Dave Van Ronk about his days and nights in the early-‘60s Greenwich Village folk revival scene. All of which is to say that Inside Llewyn Davis (title and album cover patterned after the 1962 Prestige LP, Inside Dave Van Ronk) is richly entertaining in multifarious ways.
“It begins with a close-up of a microphone and a long close-up take of Llewyn singing an old folk song, ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,’ in a dark club known as the Gaslight Cafe. He’s told someone is waiting for him in the alley out back and a man in a black coat and wide-brimmed fedora punches him out. The movie then dissolves back in time to reveal (in its own good time) how Llewyn came to be punched. So, there’s that — a structural/narrative hook that teases us along through the story. We soon find that we can easily understand why somebody — anybody — would be likely to take a swing this guy. He’s a singer, but not exactly an entertainer — talented as hell, but he doesn’t exactly ‘connect’ with people, from the stage or in his daily life.
“There are so many ways to look at the movie. Watch how Llewyn uses his music as a tool: a weapon, a shield, a challenge, a payment, a bribe, a gift, a meal ticket, a proof of authenticity, an apology... You could see it as a kind of Raging Bull with an acoustic musician instead of a boxer, a man so steeped in pride and self-loathing that his life has become an effort to build a monument to his own iconoclasm and unlovability, cloaked in a form of non-careerist ideological purity.
“And then there’s the cat, an orange tabby we (and Llewyn) belatedly find out is named Ulysses. He takes us on quite an odyssey, leading us back in time, through the Village streets and into the subway, and eventually all the way to Chicago. Who is this cat and what is he doing here? That’s a good excuse for another viewing..." ~ Jim Emerson (originally posted March 9, 2014)
Note: Inside Llewyn Davis ranked #4 in the 2013 Muriel Awards.
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