In the Coen Brothers latest film you are presented with the same dilemma as in Martin Scorsese’s recently issued The Wolf of Wall Street. Can you enjoy a movie and connect with the lead character who appears in nearly every scene in the film, when that person is not likeable? I think that Inside Llewyn Davis pulls it off much better, and not only because the eponymous character is not as despicable as Jordan Belfort. Llewyn Davis, played by the excellent Oscar Isaac, is a struggling folk singer in New York’s Greenwich village in 1961, just before Bob Dylan explodes on to the scene. He was previously part of a duo who had moderate success before his partner killed himself.
Now going solo, Davis is making little progress in his career, gigging in the same small venues and failing to sell copies of his album . Permanently broke, he rotates around his friends’ apartments, sleeping on their sofas. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of this film, but after a while I was sucked into the brilliant portrayal of a particular time and place in music history, helped by the totally believable performance by Isaac. As you would expect from the Coens, the supporting cast have been picked with extreme care as well.
Carey Mulligan, curiously overlooked like Isaac in the awards season, is great as fellow singer Jean and Justin Timberlake impresses as Jean’s partner on and off stage. There are also telling small roles for the ever reliable John Goodman, F. Murray Abraham and Jerry Grayson as Davis’ agent. Ultimately, for the film to work you have the musical numbers and performances have to convince, as a lot of time is given over to that in the movie, and fortunately, they do. I can imagine healthy sales of the soundtrack by people who go to see this film.
Despite his bad behaviour towards his friends (and cats), I found myself completely invested in Davis’ fate. The last five minutes of the film were very special, with a fleeting glimpse of Dylan and the cyclical nature of the plot revealed, which on its own added a point to the movies’ rating.
Rating: 8 out of 10