Inside Llewyn Davis

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 12/16/13 at 12:54pm

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

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 12/17/13 at 8:58pm

Carey Mulligan DP30 Interview

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 5:45pm

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

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 5:56pm

How does it rate in comparison to Her?

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 6:25pm

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

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 6:32pm

I said in another thread that I have 3 favorite films of 2013 - INSIDE LLEWYN DAVID, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES and HER. DAVIS & HER I've only seen once so I'm not sure how to compare the two just yet. After a few more viewings of each one, I'm sure that's something I'll be able to do. But just in terms of great filmmaking, it's something you really owe it to yourself to check out.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 6:40pm

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.

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 7:04pm

I hated Lost in Translation. Hope that doesn't mean I would hate Her. I'd like to give it a shot, at least.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 7:07pm

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

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 7:11pm

Oh, this came to my attention from reading other people's stuff on the film as this film is Jonze's first original screenplay by himself (no Dave Eggers or Charlie Kaufman this time around) and that ScarJo is this unique connective tissue (albeit very last minute) for the two films.

[Jon]

Posted: 1/12/14 at 11:20pm

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

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:41am

I'd like to make a documentary called Inside Oscar Isaac. :P

[trentsketch]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:46am

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.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 10:56am

Well in France Ha's case the B&W use is invoking the French New Wave films it is clearly influenced by (The 400 Blows music, the jump-cuts of early Godard, and Truffaut's Loose Change poster prominently featured) and Inside Llewyn Davis invokes the album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in its colors. Just a conscious decision by filmmakers, although Delbonnel was the one who got the album cover idea.

The bookend scenes are such a Coens move. I can't really explain it without going on a tear of their whole filmography having those moments. But T. Bone Burnett best said like a song, you have the first verses, go through a journey the rest of the song to then return to those first verses. To me after you see what leads to the final moment of the film, I think it basically is just a sign in neon that says, 'YOU BLEW IT'.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 12:52pm

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.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 1:13pm

SEMI-SPOILER response.

I have considered and will continue to consider multiple explanations to the narrative form of this movie and unraveling the link between the bookends. And that, I take it, is as it should be. In this respect its very similar - and similarly compelling and delicious - to the way some musical theater people, myself included, grapple with the book ends of "Company." But, in the case of Llewyn, I think the device is more successful, resonates more clearly with the narrative as a whole.

Is this a fantasy? A cycle of getting in one's own way? The ambiguity of the cat(s), and their multiple appearances in half-sleep and upon Llewyn awaking - how does it relate to the ambiguity of the beginning and end? Was it all a dream? Is it a folk song? Is this the interior life of an aged Llewyn in the same state as his father? This is in the way of brainstorming. But what makes the experience of this movie so successful to me is that considering all these interpretations brings out so much of what's in the movie, about "existence," as Llewyn's sister puts it, about the struggle of the artist, about going it alone? What are the connections to Homer? to Joyce?

My partner and I disagreed about one cluster of fact I'd love to hear those who've seen it weigh in on. Was Llewyn's partner Justin Timberlake? I thought it was him on the cover. Or someone else? (aren't they both named jim?) Did Llewyn perform as part of a trio with Jim and Jean as well? Did Llewyn's partner really kill himself (I assumed the line about the bridge was a flip comment not something that actually happened, my partner felt differently)? I'd be very curious to hear what people think about these questions.

I would really like to see Llewyn get an oscar for cinematography. It is exquisitely shot - but then a great many movies this year have extraordinarily good cinematography.




Updated On: 1/13/14 at 01:13 PM

[BwayTday]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 3:25pm

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.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 3:32pm

Thanks b'waytday, I just realized that you are probably right as - thank you Wikipedia - the partner's name was Mike, not Jim. I missed obviously some important parts of the movie.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 7:37pm

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.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/13/14 at 8:54pm

I think the Coens, if they ever cared, don't really care about the Oscars. AMPAS never warmed to their films until somehow, someway, letting No Country for Old Men (their darkest film) sweep, and I think that was just an anomaly because their other options were equally dark films. The Coens let their films stand on their own. Plus, it got the Grand Prix at Cannes. That counts for something.

I don't mind the Coens being dry and not entirely clear about their films ever. I think sometimes it is dangerous for filmmakers to annotate where they get their influences from because honestly some of those films feel like scrapbooks of influences that don't feel like they are doing their thing. That was actually my problem with O Brother Where Art Thou, despite an even more impressive music arrangement. It was of the text but not entirely feeling like they were actually speaking to Southern politics, the music scene, or anything else besides this being The Odyssey. Like I am sure there are plenty of people who enjoy The Big Lebowski but have no idea how much it takes from film noir or Raymond Chandler, but that does not mean the film will not work for them. I think the beauty of this film is it does feel like it also works as a text on more than a few things like about failed artists and also commenting on the need for partnership, which the Coens have had their whole lives that it seems almost insane to think about one without the other.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/14/14 at 3:15pm

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

[madlibrarian]

Posted: 1/18/14 at 7:56pm

An excellent and original film. Bumping this thread to encourage more viewing and commenting.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 1/18/14 at 10:42pm

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.