Gorgeous images and rich sounds enrich the Coen brothers’ glum story of folk singer in New York City in the early 1960s.
USA
3.5*
Directors:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Screenwriters:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
Director of Photography:
Bruno Delbonnel
Running time: 105 minutes
Two-thirds into Inside Llewyn Davis, the titular main character, a folk singer with a beautiful voice but no money, finally gets the chance to perform for a major record producer in Chicago, Bud Grossman. Grossman, whom Davis has wanted to impress for a long time, sits calmly just a few short feet away while Davis sings his heart out. The song moves us beyond belief, and we can’t help but expect that Grossman will feel the same. However, in case we still haven’t realised how desperate the situation is for this musician, we will find out very soon.
The question the scene raises, at least on the surface, is whether we want so badly for Davis to succeed because we have got to know him quite well over the first two acts, and we know he is down on his luck despite being a nice guy and an excellent singer. Perhaps Grossman doesn’t feel the same way because he doesn’t see the full picture.
But that is not true. In the film’s opening scene, when Davis performs the traditional folk song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” in the New York City’s Gaslight Café in the winter of 1961, we are immediately mesmerised by his evident talent and sincere emotional connection to the material despite not knowing anything about him. We would only recognise, towards the end of the film, what had led up to that opening scene, but actor Oscar Isaac is captivating in the role and gets our attention whether we know his story or not.
There are many more songs throughout the film, sometimes complete numbers that Davis performs in clubs or in private, sometimes a recording from the LP he had made with his previous duo partner, Mike Gorfein, who recently committed suicide. In between the many songs, Davis’s circular existence of desperation is slightly modified by his interactions with his kind friends, who allow him to sleep on their couch, and by his not-so-kind friends, like the unsmiling Jean (Carey Mulligan), who tells him she thinks she is carrying his baby and generally behaves like a real cow throughout the story.
Luckily, Davis doesn’t seem to let all this negativity get him down. He is dead broke, doesn’t even own a winter jacket despite the polar temperatures all the way through the film and has no career to speak of except for the odd performance for a small group of nightly revellers at the Gaslight. And yet, he is not depressed, and neither are we. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen are very clever in lulling us into a false sense of security by having the main character cope despite the obstacles, until the very end when we realise this is just the latest round of misery to strike him, and in all likelihood, this will still be his life for some time to come.
His failed performance for Grossman notwithstanding, perhaps the most heartbreaking moment is when he crashes on the couch of Al Cody (Adam Driver), another singer, and is looking to store his box full of unsold records somewhere. Davis looks under a small table, only to find a similar box of Cody’s unsold records. This is a brief but powerful blow to our sense of optimism.
Even the moments that do offer some hope, like a jovial and uplifting performance with Jean’s straitlaced husband, Jim (Justin Timberlake), are deflated by our realisation that, no matter how popular the song is, he will barely see enough money to pay his immediate debts.
The cinematography is some of the best of any Coen brothers film since their 2001 hit O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a suitable comparison given the musical connection between the two and the importance of a character named “Ulysses” in both. Tones of green and grey are central to the palette, and so is the play of light and darkness, sometimes verging on chiaroscuro, most evident in the Chicago scene with Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). The director of photography is Bruno Delbonnel, who has only worked with the brothers once before, on their hilarious short film contribution to the Paris, je t’aime anthology film.
There are many things here that should spell utter gloom for the viewer – mean individuals who feel nothing for others’ feelings, a central character whose best friend is his guitar and a cat whose name he doesn’t even know, the same commuters on the subway day in and day out, and a life slipping more and more quickly downhill – but thanks to the music and a spellbinding performance by Isaac, we remain a captive audience for most of the film.
He steals the show with his renditions of folk songs and, bathed in Delbonnel’s lush cinematography, sometimes with the cat draped over his shoulder to keep him warm, this period film is as beautiful as the story it tells is tragic. We may not get inside his head, but we certainly get a very good impression of the mood of the time and of his life.