Inside Llewyn Davis

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen

Screenplay: Joel & Ethan Coen

Stars: Oscar Isaac (Llewyn Davis), Carey Mulligan (Jean), Justin Timberlake (Jim), Ethan Phillips (Mitch Gorfein), Robin Bartlett (Lillian Gorfein), Max Casella (Pappi Corsicato), Jerry Grayson (Mel Novikoff), Jeanine Serralles (Joy), Adam Driver (Al Cody), Stark Sands (Troy Nelson), John Goodman (Roland Turner), Garrett Hedlund (Johnny Five), Alex Karpovsky (Marty Green), Helen Hong (Janet Fung)

MPAA Rating: R

Year of Release: 2013

Country: U.S.

Inside Llewyn Davis Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis takes place in and around Greenwich Village in 1961, ground zero for the emerging folk music scene. The film’s eponymous protagonist, played by Oscar Isaac with a sense of embittered world-weariness that belies his relative youth, is a musician who had earlier made a small splash as part of a folk duo but is now trying to make it as a solo act and finding little traction. Crashing on the couches of both friends and strangers during the day and playing dark, smoky basket houses at night, he is, like many previous Coen protagonists (Barton Fink, Larry Gopnik, et al.), a man at a crossroads whose life is folding in on itself, tightening around him. That would seem to make Llewyn an inherently sympathetic protagonist, but the way the Coens have conceived him and the way Isaac plays him, he is so fundamentally glum and disagreeable that it becomes very nearly impossible to feel for him, which turns the film into little more than an exceedingly well detailed, but emotionally bereft recreation of a bygone era.

For what it’s worth, the Coens have always traded in cynicism, irony, and sarcasm, and some of their best films center around characters who are not conventionally likeable. Their films often flirt with deadening emotional distance, but usually find a way to bridge the gap, something that never really happens in Inside Llewyn Davis. If there is a constant in their body of work—from their striking debut Blood Simple (1984), with its rogue’s gallery of noir-ish low-rent criminals, to their recent remake of True Grit (2010), which centers on Jeff Bridges’s myopic, drunken antihero—it is their ability to draw us into indelible worlds populated by flawed, struggling characters. There are always exceptions—Tim Robbins’s upbeat inventor in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) or Frances McDormand’s eternally decent Marge Gunderson in Fargo (1996)—and redemption figures its way into several of their films. But, overall the Coens seem to find their greatest inspiration in characters who are defined primarily by their (often self-generated) alienation. That they have found as much mainstream success as they have is something of a miracle.

In this regard, Llewyn Davis is a quintessential Coen creation, yet there is something about him and the film itself that feels too closed off and remote—cold, even. We admire the attention to period detail, and knowledgeable fans of folk music will appreciate the manner in which the Coens have based many of the characters on famous musicians of the era: Doc Pomus, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Dave Van Ronk, the Brooklyn-born acoustic folk musician on whom Llewyn is ever-so loosely based. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie, Dark Shadows), standing in for usual Coen collaborator Roger Deakins, is superb, bringing texture and nuance to the interplay of cigarette smoke and spotlights in the clubs and bathing the exteriors in a maudlin gray that will be familiar to anyone who has suffered through a harsh New York winter. Yet, there is something empty at the center of the film, and the Coens haven’t invested it with enough of their dyspeptic humor or offbeat characters to distract us from that hollowness.

This isn’t to say they don’t try. Like Everett McGill in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Llewyn is on a mission of sorts, in this case to get his new album noticed, which takes him from the tacky offices of his overworked agent (Jerry Grayson), to the various apartments of his overtaxed friends (including Justin Timberlake’s Jim and his wife Jean, played by Carey Mulligan, who Llewyn may or may not have impregnated), and eventually to Chicago where he hopes to grab the attention of Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), a fictionalized version of Albert Grossman, the entrepreneur and manager who put together Peter, Paul, and Mary. The trip to Chicago, although a constituent part of the plot, feels oddly misplaced, as if imported from another, much different film. Llewyn finds himself in a car driven by a mostly silent James Dean wannabe named Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund) and a bellicose jazz musician played with wicked relish by a scene-stealing John Goodman (the actor who made a belligerent character pulling a gun on someone in a bowling alley both funny and strangely likable in The Big Lebowski).

The ostensible thematic core of the film is the struggle Llewyn faces in trying to maintain his artistic integrity in the face of a music business that is constantly entreating him to sell out. There is a sense of fatalism about the film, as if Llewyn’s doom is already sealed, but the tragedy feels almost mundane. Llewyn’s need for cash drives him to compromise, primarily by playing as a studio musician on a silly, but catchy ditty written and performed by his friend Jim, yet Llewyn is so fundamentally disagreeable that there isn’t any real friction in his moral struggle. He treats the assignment with contempt, but rather than signaling his greater aspirations, it just makes him seem like an ungrateful jerk (a role he will play again with an even higher pitch at the apartment of an overfriendly benefactor who commits the egregious sin of asking him to play a song at dinner).

The Coens seem to want to humanize Llewyn by constantly putting in his care a friend’s cat, but even that bit eventually ends with a door literally slammed in the cat’s face, an admittedly bold and funny rebuke of the cinematic tendency to use animals for lazy empathy. Yet, much as I admired their willingness to flaunt narrative convention, I could just never connect with Inside Llewyn Davis. Quite contrary to the title (perhaps purposefully on the Coens’ part), I felt constantly on the outside, desperately peering in. If the film is meant to be an indictment of its protagonist, a protracted depiction of how his selfishness and misguided sense of integrity leads to his own personal and professional failure, then it is, on some level, a success, albeit not a very pleasant one and, unlike the vast majority of Coen films, one I have little interest in revisiting.

Inside Llewyn Davis Director-Approved Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Audio	English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround
Subtitles	English
Supplements	Audio commentary by authors Robert Christgau, David Hajdu, and Sean Wilentz Video conversation between filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and the Coen brothers Inside “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) documentary Another Day, Another Time (2013) concert documentary Video conversation between music producer T Bone Burnett and the Coens Video interview with music writer and historian Elijah Wald Sunday, a short film by Dan Drasin Trailers Essay by film critic Kent Jones
Distributor	The Criterion Collection
SRP	$39.95
Release Date	January 19, 2016

VIDEO & AUDIO
In keeping with the film’s authentic analogue vibe, Joel and Ethan Coen shot Inside Llewyn Davis on 35mm celluloid, rather than digitally, and Criterion’s new 4K digital transfer, which was approved by the Coens, was transferred from the original camera negative. The image is absolutely gorgeous; whatever issues I have with the characters and narrative, I cannot deny that it is a beautifully shot movie, and Criterion’s transfer does it full justice. The image boasts excellent detail and contrast despite being shot with a kind of hazy soft focus; it also maintains a nice presence of film grain. The dark, smoky interiors of the various basket houses look great, as do the grayish, wintery exteriors. The overall look of the film is heavily desaturated in terms of color, with a strong emphasis on greens, blues, and grays, which is in keeping with the film’s tone and themes (there is almost a complete lack of warm colors anywhere in the film). The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel soundtrack was mastered directly from the digital audio files, and it sounds fantastic. Along with the cinematography, the best thing about the film is its music, which is beautifully presented here. The various folk songs, all of which were recorded live, have a robust sense of depth and presence, which really helps draw you into the recreated world of Greenwich Village in 1961.
SUPPLEMENTS
This is the first time a Coen Brothers film has been released by Criterion, and it is given first-class treatment in terms of the supplements, which are excellent all-around. The Coens are all over the supplements, although not the audio commentary. Criterion has taken an interesting route here, eschewing the filmmakers or traditional film scholars and instead turning over the track to three music experts: music journalist and self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics” Robert Christgau, New Republic music editor David Hajdu, and Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz, author of Bob Dylan in America (2010). They provide a wealth of historical and musical background and context that helps enrich our appreciation of what the Coens have achieved (and also validates my contention that the film’s recreation of a bygone era is much more interesting than its characters). Inside Inside Llewyn Davis is a solid 43-minute documentary about the film’s production. It again emphasizes the musical aspect of the film, with extensive footage of the actors and musicians practicing and recording the film’s songs. There are interviews with writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen, actors Oscar Isaacson, Carey Mulligan, and Justin Timberlake, and music producers T Bone Burnett and Marcus Mumford, among others. Those who love the film’s music will be especially elated at the inclusion of Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), a 101-minute concert documentary that features Avett Brothers, Joan Baez, Dave Rawlings Machine, Rhiannon Giddens, Lake Street Dive, Colin Meloy, The Milk Carton Kids, Marcus Mumford, Punch Brothers, Patti Smith, Willie Watson, Gillian Welch, and Jack White, as well as Oscar Isaacson, all of whom were recorded in September 2013 at New York’s Town Hall. From the “Completely Random But It Works Department,” we have a 40-minute interview with the Coens conducted by director Guillermo del Toro. The interview focuses on the evolution of the Coens’ style from their first feature, Blood Simple (1984), to Inside Llewyn Davis, and del Toro proves to be a thoughtful, engaging interviewer who asks good questions in probing the eclectic directors’ ever-changing approach to filmmaking. For those who are looking for more information about the film’s music and historical context, there is a 16-minute video conversation between T Bone Burnett and the Coens about folk music, with snappy animated illustrations by Drew Christie, and a 19-minute interview with music writer and historian Elijah Wald about the early ’60s Greenwich Village folk scene. Finally, the disc includes Sunday, a short film by Dan Drasin documenting a 1961 clash between folk musicians and police in Washington Square Park and six trailers.

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

Overall Rating: (2)