Inside Llewyn Davis

With the number of movies I see in the theater each year, I obviously also see a ton of previews before each one of them. And very few of them, outside of the mainstream romantic comedy, make me openly sigh in disgust. Well the first 1 minute and 55 seconds of the Inside Llewyn Davis preview fell into this category as it seemed like someone purposely set out to make the least interesting and quite possibly the worst movie ever. Who wants to see a 2 hour movie about a week in the life of a folk singer in the sixties not named Bob Dylan? Well I felt safe in making this assumption until the last 5 seconds of the preview came along. This is when the voice over said “A new film by the Coen brothers”; damn you you last 5 seconds! I figured there was no way I could not see it now because Coen brother movies are impossible to sum up in 2 minutes. You can’t get a true feel for what the movie is about and it’s nearly impossible to properly display their smart and quirky nature in that time frame.  If I had based my decision solely on the preview I would’ve missed out on The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Fargo; all of which are classics.

But I was still a bit apprehensive because it had that Barton Fink feel to it; a movie that was basically a big inside joke that only fellow literary nerds would enjoy. They did another movie that was similar in tone in A Serious Man but I absolutely loved that movie and it actually ended up being one of my favorites of theirs. But again, this is a movie about a folk singer in the 60’s. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate folk music or today’s version of it, singer-songwriter. These shows always put me to sleep and at best you end up with a poetry slam that has some scrub playing the same three chords over and over again. These people are never quite as interesting as their songs suggest they are.They’re probably more like that Walter Mitty scrub in that they imagine all of these awful things happening to them and then they decide to bore us to death with their songs on the subject.

Well the Coens take us on this circular journey using the dark and cold winter of New York as its backdrop. You immediately are introduced to Llewyn Davis and his beautiful voice in the film’s opening shot as he is performing a heartfelt song in the middle of this café/bar and has the full attention of everyone there. At that moment you can tell that he is at peace with everything that going on in his life and that he is pouring everything he has into this song. The only problem is, he can’t sing every second of his life. Because the second he steps off the stage he immediately becomes this detached and unlikable struggling artist that has to sleep on whoever's couch is available for that night. He usually rotates between the couch of his best friend and former lover in Carey Mulligan or at the home of his former band mate's parents. He manages to upset everyone he comes into contact with at one point or another due to the fact that he is uncomfortable in his own skin. He can’t seem to realize that it takes more than just skill to connect with people in the music industry and because of it, he can’t seem to get ahead while others are experiencing at the very least moderate success in this growing world.

This becomes glaringly apparent at every dinner party he attends at his former band mates’ parents house, while he is in the recording studio with Justin Timberlake, and especially when he finds out that he may be the father of Mulligan’s expectant child. This causes major problems as Mulligan is married to Timberlake, so you understand the constant hostility she shows Llewyn. Now I realize that all of this may sound somewhat interesting but believe when I say it’s not.

The Coens go light on the humor here and the few attempts they do make either end with a small chuckle or they completely miss due to a miscast. I love Adam Driver from HBO’s Girls but he is way too much of a hipster for his scene in the recording studio with Timberlake and Davis. He would never quite sell out like they do in that scene, so his quirky take on what’s happening doesn’t quite come off as believable. The one act in the movie that is typical Coens comes when Davis decides to take a trip to Chicago in hopes to get a gig and he has deal with John Goodman and his quiet and straight to the point driver. Goodman makes fun of suicide and folk singers in general and brings up some points that almost had me applauding in approval. Too bad the entire film wasn’t like this act because this was the only time I didn’t want to commit suicide myself.

I know that the Coens are way smarter than I am, so maybe this was another one of their esoteric films that I’m too dumb to get but sadly I don’t think so. They did manage to of course sneak another reference to the Odyssey in the film but in the end this movie was just to WEAK for me to suggest it for others to suffer through. Of course though, every other critic is too embarrassed to admit that they didn’t get it either, so they go the safe route and gush all over it. Well you will get none of that malarkey here!