Inside Llewyn Davis

There hasn't been much discussion on this one so I'm curious what peoples thoughts are. I've been seeing a LOT of films lately (trying to see everything before the Globes) and this is the film that has stuck with me the most so far this season.

Also, the soundtrack is absolutely one of the best soundtracks in years. As I walked out of the theater, I was already in the iTunes store purchasing it and it's been on constant rotation ever since.

Updated On: 12/16/13 at 12:54 PM

Just saw it and my head is spinning around it, in the best of all possible ways. My heart is spinning around as well. Strange, beautiful, exquisitely shot, and very risky. I am not completely certain - think the dust has to settle a bit first on this one - but I'm pretty sure I love it.

Updated On: 1/12/14 at 05:45 PM

Having not seen Her and therefore seeing no potential similarities to them, I'll just go and say to those who think it is 'minor Coens' is like saying Diary of a Country Priest is 'minor Bresson'. Interesting period companion piece to A Serious Man albeit that work is one of the most intimate about the Coens' Judaism. Inside Llewyn Davis is about the vicious circle of poor decision-making and the road not traveled can effect you, so mind your pride, please. This is especially true when you are in a cultural movement/moment that in a Darwinian way is bound to leave people behind (note the car scene of the Jazz man John Goodman and the beat poet Garrett Hedlund) that to be abrasive toward the trends of that moment/movement can push you into that group. Oscar Isaac was outstanding, the soundtrack (although the album is great, many of the contexts of those songs are very interestingly served in the film) is well-chosen by T. Bone Burnett, and Bruno Delbonnel in his first full-length feature collaboration with the Coens is outstanding. You see the 35mm grains and the mix of washed-out colors that melds both the styles of Delbonnel and the Coens to great effect, but I think the Cat P.O.V. shot in the subway was one of my favorite shots in the film.

Much is made about how unlikable Llewyn is but there's nothing really too over the top or flagrant or bad for the sake of being an anti-hero characterization from the script or Isaac. Considering what has happened to one of the characters off-screen, the behavior of certain characters rang very true to me.

I think the Coens made a very personal work with everything you would expect from a Coens film. I think I heard Matt Singer and Wesley Morris both read the film as, 'The Coens contemplating how one would survive without the other'. I love the strange, off-beat nature of it all. Heck, I'd double-bill this with the equally great Frances Ha about young New Yorkers of their times in how to and not to handle crises.

Updated On: 1/13/14 at 06:25 PM

From reading stuff on Her, the most obvious companion piece or point of comparison is probably Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. It appears this is Spike Jonze, Sofia's ex-husband, touching on the matter that she went into in Lost in Translation.

But I think the original question was Her vs. Inside Llewyn Davis for 2013 films.

Interesting, Strummer. LOST IN TRANSLATION is one of my favorite films and I can definitely see similarities between the two. It's strange how that never occurred to me until just now.

Updated On: 1/12/14 at 07:07 PM

Re: "Her" - apparently, if you ask "Siri" if she is "Her", you get some wonderfully bitchy replies.

I just saw Inside Llewyn Davis yesterday. I appreciated it, but I don't get it. Like, clueless over what happened at the end. I get the repeated pattern of seeking success and failures, but I guess I don't understand the actual structure of the narrative. I'm aware there's no clear answer as to what happened because of the fluidity of the story. I started to lose track of it on the return trip and felt like I was grasping for anything to get pulled back in.

I did enjoy it. I like the cinematography. The music is fun and the acting is great. It felt real, too, to the artist experience. I'd like to pair it with Frances Ha and watch it again in a few months. Strange we'd get two indie films exploring talented artists who just can't get that one break to live as artists in the same year. Stranger still that the period piece is in color and the modern piece is in grainy black and white.

I never noticed that about the Coens before. I see it. And it does riff on that folk song structure. Maybe I was just over thinking it. That does help some, strummergirl.

This thread is bringing up a lot of great points I hadn't considered! I really liked the film a lot but left a little wary of some aspects. This thread is really clearing things up!

I loved how honest the whole thing was. Carey Mulligan said in an interview about the movie something to the effect of "there was never any conversation about making these characters likeable" and I loved that. I really cared about the characters even when there faults are put on display, and I think that is a testament to how good the Coen brothers are. All of the elements were really well done, and it really was visually exquisite.

*some spoilers*

Henrik, maybe I'm taking it too literally, but I assumed because of his deep felt reaction when the woman started singing his partner's supposed part in that song at the dinner party, that the partner did really jump off the bridge. I kind of saw the movie as portraying this man trying to recover from that loss and failure, and not being able to because of his own decisions and pattern of behavior. To me, he was just profoundly stuck.

The Homer or Joyce issue is what threw me off. Oh Brother Where Art Thou was already a loose adaptation of The Odyssey, so we know the Coens like working with that material. Shoot, that's even another folk quasi-musical with a lot of loud and unlikable characters circling each other. The big difference is Oh Brother... had a very clear plot.

I'm thinking Inside Llewyn Davis might be a play on Ulysses, but in a more abstract way. Some of the elements--the long scene with the jazz musician riffing on similar stories, the obsession with finding food for the cat (popped up as often and as randomly as the hunt for good organ meat), the crosses but very few actual meetings with Jim and Jean (like Dedalus and Molly), randomly joining up with various people and going along with their stories--are Joyce-like. It just doesn't line up like (for example) Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, with literal chapter by chapter parallels to the novel.

I think it'll be really interesting to hear the Coens open up about this film after the Oscar season really kicks into high gear. They'll have to be doing to campaigning if the film gets in for Best Picture so they can sell voters on their vision.

I've come to a similar conclusion as you, Trentsketch. I see many semi-parallels betweeen Llewyn's journey and those of Ulysses, Stephen and Leo, but they are all semi-parallels. Then again, Leo's and Ulysses's journeys were far from fully corresponding.

Akron half-fills in for Utica, but Llewyn never actually attempts to get there (although I expected him to make that choice twice, he didn't). In both cases, weather and accidents intervene. Of course Ulysses the cat's journey home (and those of the animals in the Amazing Journey) parallels Ulysses the hero's long journey home. In the Odyssey, there is a poignant recognition by pet (Argus) of man, in Llewyn, a throughline a recognition (or lack thereof) by man of his ("foster") pet guides the narrative. Stephen's guilt (or lack thereof) about his mother may relate to Llewyn's relationship with his father.

No doubt, an entire world of events happens in Joyce's Ulysses, and a great many stories told since (and, by Joycean necessity, before) can be traced and tied to it.

Updated On: 1/14/14 at 03:15 PM

I enjoyed it quite a lot and I tend to find the Coen brothers a bit overrated, on the whole. Oscar Isaac was exceptional and would have certainly garnered a well-deserved Best Actor nomination had the category not been so competitive this year.