Balada de un hombre común

"If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it's a folk song."

The Coen brothers have worked together over the past couple of decades delivering some inspiring work. Their films are extremely varied (ranging from dark comedies to westerns or thrillers) and that is why people rank their films so differently according to their own genre preferences. What these films tend to have in common is that they focus on an unfortunate main character (the Coen brothers don't seem to be too interested in successful characters) and they also include a lot of quirky characters. The Coens are also great at writing interesting characters that despite being unpleasant at times still capture our attention, and they also include a lot of dark and sharp humor. Inside Llewyn Davis is one of those films where we are forced to follow an unpleasant guy in the course of a week and somehow hope he recovers and achieves his goal. This is a film that you probably enjoy more when you think about it once it's over or on a rewatch because it's philosophical and sad, but rewarding none the less if you stick through it. It is also open to many readings and interpretations. You can think of this as being an honest film about someone who doesn't achieve his dreams. We've been saturated with so many films that focus on following our dreams and never giving up on them, but it is rare to see a film focusing on someone who doesn't achieve them. Like Llewyn, we sometimes throw away other possibilities for success because we are too blinded on pursuing our own thing. That is exactly what happens here (and in this way it differs from A Serious Man where the main character suffers misfortune from things that he can't control). Llewyn could've listened and taken good advice, but he's so narcissistic and blinded by his own ambition that he misses several good opportunities. Another way you can read this film, and this is the one that worked best for me, is that Llewyn is learning to cope with the loss of his partner. He was a better singer when he wasn't on his own and now that he has lost his partner he doesn't seem to know what to do next. He is a tortured artist struggling to cope with grief. It's as if the Coens were admitting that they wouldn't know how to make films without each other. They inspire one another and that is where their success relies. Perhaps if something would happen to one of them they would feel like Llewyn, lost and unable to move on. This is just brilliant filmmaking and the Coens prove once again that they are on top of their game.

The film takes place in the course of one week as we follow a struggling folk singer named Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaacs) across Greenwich Village in the winter of 1961. He has recently released a solo album that isn't selling. With no money and no apartment, Llewyn spends his days jumping from couch to couch at friends houses while performing small gigs at local Cafes. One of the places he crashes in is at fellow musicians, Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean's (Carey Mulligan) apartment. Llewyn isn't really a guy anyone wants to be around much, but he continues to pursue his dream of becoming a solo artist. In a way he's his own worst enemy as many of the obstacles he faces are his own doing.

I'm not a fan of depressing films, but somehow the Coens captured my attention through their smart script and beautifully constructed film. The gray cinematography is gorgeous and really sets the melancholic tone of the film. Somehow despite not liking Llewyn, Isaacs manages to portray his character so well that we do root for him and want him to succeed. It's an impressive film that succeeds thanks to Isaacs heartfelt performance. We also get to meet some of the quirky characters that the Coens always include in their films. John Goodman and Garrett Hedlund were the chosen ones this time around and they both added the dark humor in this otherwise sad and melancholic film. The soundtrack is also a lot of fun to listen too and Isaacs has a great voice.

Inside Llewyn Davis is an intimate, well-executed, and honest slice of life. It features a humanistic, heartfelt performance by Oscar Isaac as the titular folk singer, arresting cinematography, and a sharp, tight-fisted script by the Coen brothers, who also directed.

It's Greenwich Village in the early sixties, when folk music was either coming into its own or ready to be usurped by a more mainstream genre. Llewyn has no home, drifting from gig to gig and crashing on couch after couch as a matter of design; is vagrancy is his life's plan. Llewyn is at turns a noble soul who exists for the sake of making the music he wants to make and a resentful twerp who mooches off friends just to sustain his unsustainable lifestyle.

The movie is only somewhat linear, with closing scenes mirroring opening scenes, and it is told entirely from Llewyn's point of view. The Coen brothers masterfully show us not only Llewyn's perspective but also an outside perspective; this allows us to feel both empathy and loathing toward him.

Llewyn is nothing if not complex. The movie does a terrific job of avoiding the usual clichés, such as a down-on-his-luck musician catching a lucky break, or a bitter man having a quick change of heart. It's not that Llewyn is constantly sneering at everyone, holding his poverty up as both a shield and a trophy, it's that he is so multilayered that when he does a kind act or offers some praise or thanks, we don't feel that his doing so is in any way out of character. Llewyn is a self-tortured soul, but unlike caricatures of wandering folkies, he is at his center a realist, albeit a prideful one.

During his travels and travails, Llewyn encounters people ranging from the genuine (his singing friends Jim and Jean, played by Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan) to the absurd (a rotund, blustery John Goodman). Oh, and a cat that travels with Llewyn - at least until he can get him or her back to the owner. The encounters with the genuine folks feel just as normal as if you or I encountered them; those with the more absurd of the lot feel perfectly surreal, and when they do end one almost wonders if we've all imagined the encounters through Llewyn himself.

The music is beautiful and moving. Isaac himself performs Llewyn's songs, with a sweet, vulnerable voice that offers a touch of soul to Llewyn's otherwise-bleak surroundings. When Llewyn is really on, you can feel his pain leap right off the screen into your brain; when he appears to be going through the motions and not singing from his heart, you can feel the lack of depth that his intended audience also feels. Isaac is just flat-out terrific.

Ultimately, it is Isaac and the music that push this film into the territory of great cinema. The story itself is stark, moody, unyielding - just like a New York City winter, really. And the movie, like Llewyn's own life, appears to have no point - except to illustrate just how pointless Llewyn is making his life, through his stubborn marriage to his craft and a desire to stay uprooted

Like almost everyone who loved or hated this film, I do generally like the Coen brothers and am not against having to do work to enjoy and appreciate a film. This is an important thing to say because Inside Llewyn Davis is certainly not a film to come to as a casual viewer just looking to kill a few hours – not as a snobby thing of "you'll not appreciate it" but just a reality that the film does almost nothing to help the viewer. The plot involves struggling folk musician Llewyn Davis in the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s; he is not particularly commercial, is irresponsible, downbeat and cannot look after others or even the cat belonging to others. We follow him over the course of a week which will change his life and see the world around him change too.

I really did want to like this film because at times there is a certain beauty to it in the pained reality of its lead character, his situation and his gradual realization of where his life is and where it is going. Unfortunately this is generally spread very thin and instead of having a structure that supports this, we instead get an episodic approach that makes the "week" feel like months, sees characters just come and go whether we have an interest in them or not and generally doesn't allow you to do more than grasp at metaphors which drift by – usually resulting in the people who love the film the most being those who brought a lot of their own selves to the table, leaving us who look to the film to at least help, feeling left out in the cold and even a little bored.

The music is beautiful when it comes and the cinematography is excellent as it captures and shapes the feel of the film and the character – it is bleak to look at for sure, but it is suitable and effective for what the film is. The same could be said of Isaac's performance because it is what the film needs him to do but the downside is that it isn't really what the viewer needs him to do. His personal journey (physical and emotional) is made harder b the coldness of his character – there is really not much to grab hold of here and he is generally difficult. As often is the case with the Coens, we have characters drifting though the story usually in a colorful fashion – the times it has worked in other films has been frequent but here I didn't think it did at all, with nobody seeming to add much. As writers of the material and directors of their cast the "blame" (depending on your view) belongs with the Coens as they have made this film very difficult to get into.

Full of supposed metaphors and with a sadness which is put in the distance look of its title character rather than in his heart or in the audience's line of sight, the film drifts along with a general sense of sadness and change which always interested me but just seemed deliberately out of reach and distant. I'm sure if you "get it" then it is a film to adore, but for me it just didn't work at all.

No doubt: Llewyn Davis is a loser. First, his career as a folk singer is going badly: his duet partner committed suicide, his record isn't selling, he makes so little that he cannot afford his own apartment but has to move from friend to friend, or rather from acquaintance to acquaintance. Secondly, as far as human relationships are concerned, he is a total failure. His ex girlfriend despises him, one of her predecessors faked an abortion to have him out of her – and the mutual child's life – people who are sympathetic to him, get a rather rude treatment on a daily basis. After A Serious Man, the Coen brothers have again chosen to depict a man on the wrong side of luck. Only this time, one might say he deserves it. Or maybe not, for he has one redeeming feature. The film opens with a long scene in which Davis (Oscar Isaac) performs a sad old folk song. The camera gently hovers around him, catches the hushed, intensely attentive atmosphere of the smoky basement club, while he sucks his audience – us – into the dark, sorrowful world he creates in his song, hinting at a depth he so often will not show in "real life". It is this contrast, the dialogue between the sadly funny tale of a modern Don Quixote and that other, older, tenderer story, the music tells. For as much as this is Llewyn's story, it also is that of the redeeming power of music. For even if Davis is the same at the end as the story comes full circle and returns to its opening, as he once again gets beaten up and is succeeded on stage by a young, cocky folk singer with a nasal voice who will soon change music – and not just folk music – forever, there is just the tiniest hint that this Llewyn Davis might have some sort of promise after all, maybe not as a successful singer, but as a human being. Inside Llewyn Davis is inspired loosely by the story of Dave van Ronk, a star of the Greenwich Village folk scene around the time of Bob Dylan's arrival there in 1961. Dylan learned a lot from van Ronk and stole some of his most promising songs, but that is a story to be told another day. This one is about a man lost in a world that hasn't been waiting for him, who has a mission that is entirely his own. The lengths to which he goes to show the world he doesn't care are astounding. And yet he craves love. Oscar Isaac is a miracle: even in his most repelling state, in his most rejecting attitude, there is a flicker of sad longing in his face, his eyes, a face the Coens show us much of. It is one you need to dive into, closed to the casual observer but hiding so much pain and uncertainty and desire to live one sometimes thinks it must explode. The Coens' cinema is one of subtlety, of nuanced, of shades of grey between the black and white. In Isaac, they have found their perfect actor, heading a stellar cast including Carey Mulligan, John Goodman and Justin Timberlake. As so often, the Coen brothers are masters at creating an atmosphere, a universe of its own, unique as well as absolutely consistent. It is a world of the night, in which grey shades reign, days are pale and dust is everywhere. Even in the open there is a sense of narrowness, of tight spaces, lightless basements that are cage and protective space in one. It is the tiny holes that provide the only rooms for creativity, for the soul to speak. And so it is that the dark world of the underground gradually regains some warmth and coziness, the dark becomes a zone of comfort, while everything else becomes cold and distant. Having said all this, Inside Llewyn Davis is first and foremost a comedy in the Coenesque sense of the term. It is a Quixotic tale full of quirky characters at time bordering on the fairy-tale like – especially true for the sequence around Goodman's character, a trodden-down mixture of villain and clown that calls up associations of the expressionist nightmare world of their earlier film Barton Fink. The other foot of the film is firmly on the ground, in the existential struggle of a man the world won't welcome. But there is still that third element: music, that timeless realm of love and pain and suffering and hope. It is here the film is anchored, it is here this Don Quixote conquers his windmills, armed solely with his guitar. It is here it all comes together. Tragedy, comedy, fairy tale, social drama, held together by the softest of touches. Another Coen brothers masterpiece. What else could be expected?

Much like most other movies by the Coen's, this seemed very different to everything else they have done. Before seeing it, I expected it to be a sincere attempt at portraying a Dylan-like figure, with a heavy focus on the music itself, and also with a whole lot of nostalgia. This is kind of true, but these are not the aspects of the film that'll stay with you (even though the music was really good!).

There's not really much of a plot in this movie, but it's so well crafted that you hardly notice. Llewyn has a goal, but it's obvious from the start that this movie is not about reaching that goal, but rather about his every day struggle, and the life as a folk musician in an almost mythical period of music history. Llewyin is an interesting character, flawed but easy to like. His struggle feels real, and plays into an overarching theme of how your fate can be out of your hands, but also how perseverance can lead to something good.

The movie is similar to road movies in that it features a lot of different characters that Llewyn meets and interacts with. Some of these are very much Coen-esque, and I'm always amazed by how Coen manages to establish such layered side characters, despite them only appearing on screen briefly. Bot casting and writing must be stellar to be able to do this, and they seem to do it all the time.

It ends in a way that makes the movie more than just a mood piece, and opens up for some interesting discussions. Once again, they've managed to make a brilliant film.