Directors / writers / editors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Photography: Bruno Delbonnel
Music: Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett, Max Casella, Jerry Grayson, Jeanine Serralles, Adam Driver, Stark Sands, Alex Karpovsky, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham
Just to get some sense of where I stand here, I did a quick and dirty internet search for lists of "best Coen brothers movies" and then, a little appalled by what I was finding, made my own list (off the cuff, without benefit of systematic review). See below. I know I have been in the minority in not thinking much of this early-'60s Greenwich Village period piece, at least the first time I saw it when it was new, but it turns out there's a fairly wide range of opinion on Coens movies—one list has True Grit last, for example, while another has it at the very top, as the best movie they ever made. Inside Llewyn Davis reliably makes it into the top 10 of these lists, sometimes the top 5, and it was #2 on one list.
After a second look more recently, I agree top 10 of their 18 or so pictures total seems fair enough. My first reaction was a matter of my own biases, which start with a lifelong indifference to midcentury American folk music, particularly the fruit of early-'60s Greenwich Village. Then the way Llewyn Davis uses Bob Dylan was too much for me, and it is still annoying. He shows up off-camera at the very end as approximately the Inevitable Future of Folk Music (iconic voice of a generation not far behind), which struck me more as cheap pandering than ... well, I'm still not sure what the idea of sticking him in there that way is supposed to be. Mostly it feels like playing cynically to Greenwich Village folkie sentimentalists like Pete Seeger.
Just to get some sense of where I stand here, I did a quick and dirty internet search for lists of "best Coen brothers movies" and then, a little appalled by what I was finding, made my own list (off the cuff, without benefit of systematic review). See below. I know I have been in the minority in not thinking much of this early-'60s Greenwich Village period piece, at least the first time I saw it when it was new, but it turns out there's a fairly wide range of opinion on Coens movies—one list has True Grit last, for example, while another has it at the very top, as the best movie they ever made. Inside Llewyn Davis reliably makes it into the top 10 of these lists, sometimes the top 5, and it was #2 on one list.
After a second look more recently, I agree top 10 of their 18 or so pictures total seems fair enough. My first reaction was a matter of my own biases, which start with a lifelong indifference to midcentury American folk music, particularly the fruit of early-'60s Greenwich Village. Then the way Llewyn Davis uses Bob Dylan was too much for me, and it is still annoying. He shows up off-camera at the very end as approximately the Inevitable Future of Folk Music (iconic voice of a generation not far behind), which struck me more as cheap pandering than ... well, I'm still not sure what the idea of sticking him in there that way is supposed to be. Mostly it feels like playing cynically to Greenwich Village folkie sentimentalists like Pete Seeger.
However, looking at it again I can see how Inside Llewyn Davis is also a remarkable study of a life in collapse—known by anyone going through one as "having a bad patch." The movie is also admirably sensitive to the plight of the artist, driven by a creative spirit to brave acts of foolishness like performing on stage, but often humiliated just for trying. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a sailing man in the merchant marine trying to make it in New York as a folksinger. I understand Dave Van Ronk is the basic model for him. Davis used to have a singing partner. They recorded an album as a duo that is now doing nothing and on the verge of being remaindered. The partner committed suicide. Davis had sex with another friend's girlfriend and now she's pregnant and doesn't know who the father is and she is furious. He borrows money a lot. He sleeps on the couches of friends. Leaving one place the cat gets out and the door is already locked behind him. He valiantly totes it all over New York trying to figure out a way to get it back to the owners. Then it runs away again.
It's brutal what he's going through. Everyone seems to hate him and he often lashes back, realizing too late he has once again alienated someone who might have been able to help him. He's in that spiral. And he might deserve much of what he is getting—he's plainly a rat, among other things—but that doesn't make it any less painful to live through or even witness. The picture reaches a strange crescendo of the awful (and the improbable) when he leaves New York for Chicago in a drive-away car with two strange characters. It is winter, a road trip from hell, and prime Coens absurdism (John Goodman particularly good in this sequence), which finishes with further humiliation for Davis in Chicago when he tries to get a gig.
Again, to be clear, not much of the music in Inside Llewyn Davis is reaching me—that's on me—but I believe Davis is intended to be taken as a genuine raw talent, even if he is personally self-destructive and off-putting and so on. The A story is Davis's faltering career and all his brushes with success, some of which he wrecks himself and some of which elude him by circumstances, or fate if you want. I like the cat shenanigans more, though that's the B story at best if not the C story here—it's a cat acting just like a cat and there's even one of those wonderful and strange resolutions that cats seem able to produce at will.
And, yes, I have to give it up also for the relentless way Inside Llewyn Davis makes everything seem to be conspiring against Davis. This is how life can go, closing in on you. Many of us know it from personal experience. His singing partner killed himself, he's homeless and broke, he can't catch a break with his music. Everybody is mad at him, for all different and usually legitimate reasons. He even runs into problems when he gives up his musical aspirations and tries to go back to the merchant marine work. It's not necessarily fun to watch but it feels true to life, unlike the final scenes with "Bob Dylan," which still feel like the worst pandering I have ever seen the Coens do.
Top 10 Coen brothers movies
1. Fargo
2. No Country for Old Men
3. A Serious Man
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Miller's Crossing
6. True Grit
7. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
8. Barton Fink
9. Inside Llewyn Davis
10. The Man Who Wasn't There
It's brutal what he's going through. Everyone seems to hate him and he often lashes back, realizing too late he has once again alienated someone who might have been able to help him. He's in that spiral. And he might deserve much of what he is getting—he's plainly a rat, among other things—but that doesn't make it any less painful to live through or even witness. The picture reaches a strange crescendo of the awful (and the improbable) when he leaves New York for Chicago in a drive-away car with two strange characters. It is winter, a road trip from hell, and prime Coens absurdism (John Goodman particularly good in this sequence), which finishes with further humiliation for Davis in Chicago when he tries to get a gig.
Again, to be clear, not much of the music in Inside Llewyn Davis is reaching me—that's on me—but I believe Davis is intended to be taken as a genuine raw talent, even if he is personally self-destructive and off-putting and so on. The A story is Davis's faltering career and all his brushes with success, some of which he wrecks himself and some of which elude him by circumstances, or fate if you want. I like the cat shenanigans more, though that's the B story at best if not the C story here—it's a cat acting just like a cat and there's even one of those wonderful and strange resolutions that cats seem able to produce at will.
And, yes, I have to give it up also for the relentless way Inside Llewyn Davis makes everything seem to be conspiring against Davis. This is how life can go, closing in on you. Many of us know it from personal experience. His singing partner killed himself, he's homeless and broke, he can't catch a break with his music. Everybody is mad at him, for all different and usually legitimate reasons. He even runs into problems when he gives up his musical aspirations and tries to go back to the merchant marine work. It's not necessarily fun to watch but it feels true to life, unlike the final scenes with "Bob Dylan," which still feel like the worst pandering I have ever seen the Coens do.
Top 10 Coen brothers movies
1. Fargo
2. No Country for Old Men
3. A Serious Man
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Miller's Crossing
6. True Grit
7. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
8. Barton Fink
9. Inside Llewyn Davis
10. The Man Who Wasn't There
Maybe the narrative implication of the Dylan gesture is that Llewyn's hapless experience in the early '60s Greenwich folk scene is actually more typical than the meteoric legend of Dylan. -Skip
ReplyDelete