Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang
To borrow shamelessly from a
mordant holiday song, the only thing you’ll find inside Llewyn Davis is a heart
that’s full of unwashed socks, and a soul that’s full of gunk. His brain is
full of spiders; he’s as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel.
He really is a heel.
None of which is the slightest
bit amusing or entertaining, as was the case with the green-skinned Grinch.
Llewyn Davis is simply a self-centered jerk: a struggling Greenwich Village
folk singer attempting to make it in a business he neither understands nor
admires, and who bitterly stomps on the feelings of anybody daft enough to
extend a gesture of kindness.
We are, once again, spending
nearly two hours in the presence of a thoroughly unlikable boor, and to no
purpose. Llewyn doesn’t learn anything; neither does he mature or experience
anything close to an epiphany. He has no spiritual side, and family ties are
(ahem) mangled up in tangled-up knots.
He simply uses people without
gratitude or a thought of compensation; the words “thanks” probably would choke
him to death.
And yet all these personality
failings aren’t the most irritating part of Inside
Llewyn Davis. No, the biggest disappointment comes from the knowledge that
this is a Joel and Ethan Coen film, and we wait in vain for any trace of the
clever allegory, scathing character analysis or deliciously dark humor that has
invigorated previous films such as Fargo
and No Country for Old Men.
Solace comes there none. This new
film is just a dreary slog.
The story follows Llewyn (Oscar
Isaac) during what we can imagine is a typical few weeks in the winter of
1961/62, as he struggles to hustle up gigs while spending nights on the couches
of the few people still willing to tolerate him. He’s a story-song purist: an
angry young man determined to succeed on his own terms, and not yet aware that
his brand of poetic, soul-baring angst is about to be buried beneath the
hook-laden folk of Bob Dylan and the more melodic, listener-friendly music of
(for example) Peter, Paul and Mary.
Not to mention the even more
pernicious influence of bubble-gum pop songs.
As always is the case with a Coen
brothers film, this one boasts a killer soundtrack. All the music is engaging
and illuminating, not to mention a perfect depiction of the era. Isaac is
persuasively credible behind a microphone, a guitar held in two capable hands;
his music emerges from somewhere deep within, and for a brief moment we can
imagine that he actually has something important to say.
Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Jean
(Carey Mulligan) are the closest Llewyn can get to having actual friends;
they’re a couple on stage and off, and their simple harmonic purity represents
one path the music industry is about to take. Jim and Jean will Make It:
absolutely no question of that ... even when Jim pens a droll novelty tune — so early ’60s! — by way of honoring
America’s first man in space, and Llewyn joins the combo recording it under the
billing of “The John Glenn Singers.”
After which, Llewyn demonstrates
his financial idiocy by insisting on a straight-payment check as an unbilled
session player, rather than troubling with the mildly more involved formality
of getting credit and sharing in eventual royalties. Because we just know that song, in all its goofiness,
will become a hit.
Watching it performed by
Timberlake, recalling his real-world fame, is one of this film’s few genuine
delights. And the vocal inflections contributed by Adam Driver’s Al Cody are hilarious.
Jim actually seems to like
Llewyn, more fool he, but Jean adopts more of a scorched-earth policy. We
suspect that she does actually care for this guitar-wielding misanthrope, but
at the moment she’s furious with him ... or, to be more precise, furious with
herself but using him as a release. Seems that Jean slept with Llewyn in the
recent past, and now she’s pregnant; although Jim could be the father of her child, she can’t be sure, and therefore
wishes to terminate.
Mulligan, oddly angelic in long,
dark hair and the beatnik apparel typical of the era, puts impressive fury into
her bitter tirades. Llewyn can’t really argue; neither can we, not even at this
early stage of the story.
Llewyn’s subsequent days are
highlighted by two story motifs, both of which hint at the allegorical elements
the Coens often employ. Many of his actions are informed by the presence of a
cat, or perhaps a symbolic series of cats: initially the affectionate orange
feline owned by Mitch and Lillian Gorfein (Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett),
two academics who enjoy “knowing” Llewyn as a means of bolstering their hipness
cred, and who often let him crash on their couch when he’s in their more
civilized part of New York.
This is, just in passing, a quite
scathing indictment of university professors as stuffy intellectuals: a sign,
at least, that the Coens haven’t completely abandoned their caustic
sensibilities.
Llewyn’s interactions with this
cat can be viewed as a series of celestial opportunities for better behavior; he
struggles over doing the right thing, when the Gorfein’s beloved pet
accidentally escapes from their apartment, but ultimately fails the test ...
apparently unaware that bad karma is a bitch.
That the cat’s name is Ulysses is
no accident, of course; this reflects the mildly Homeric journey that Llewyn
subsequently takes, when he splits expenses and driving duties during an
increasingly weird car trip to Chicago, where he hopes to impress the owner of
a well-regarded club. Llewyn’s fellow driver is a scruffy young stoic dubbed
Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), something of a chaperone for Roland Turner (John
Goodman), a veteran jazz musician who behaves more like a mojo man recently
escaped from a Santeria ceremony.
Here, at last, we’re in familiar
Coen brothers territory. But for all its off-kilter trappings, this brief
journey hasn’t anywhere near the thematic qualities of O Brother Where Art Thou, and the much more vivid “odyssey” that
film’s protagonists take through Depression-era Mississippi. This trip is
simply a series of disconnected stops and pseudo-mystical bloviations, the
latter coming from Turner, Nero Wolfe-esque in his immensity.
Is Turner an intriguing
character? Absolutely; Goodman always delivers a fascinating performance. In
this case, however, he’s emoting in a vacuum, and his presence eventually
proves just as pointless as most everything else in this lamentable mess of a
narrative.
Llewyn’s performances,
ultimately, are the film’s sole saving grace. The intimate encounters are the
best, as when he auditions for the Chicago club owner — an attentive,
all-knowing F. Murray Abraham — or attempts to bridge a long-standing
estrangement with his institutionalized, dementia-afflicted father (Stan Carp).
The latter scene is a heartbreaking killer.
The family bonds aren’t much
better with Llewyn’s working-class sister, Joy (Jeanine Serralles), who doesn’t
pretend to understand “the music biz” and resents her brother’s condescending
attitude toward what “regular folks” do to put food on the table. Little love
lost there, on either side.
The scruffy folk scene itself can
be viewed as a character in its own right, and that part of this film is both
spot-on and compelling: the shabby little clubs, the fascinating range of
performers, the exploitative “handling” by agents and record companies. Much is
made of Llewyn’s former partner, whose recent (?) suicide becomes a punch line;
we realize that Llewyn likely was the more talented songwriter/musician, but
that his late partner was the duo’s more amiable “face” who connected better
with the public.
Absent that guy who softened his
rough edges, Llewyn can’t succeed ... and that knowledge is driving him crazy.
Okay, so we understand Llewyn ...
but that still doesn’t justify his behavior, nor does it make enduring him,
from our theater seats, any more worthwhile.
The fringe dwellers actually are
more amusing, as befits the caricatures and grotesques who invariably populate
a Coen brothers production. Goodman’s Roland Turner makes the most significant
appearance, but equally memorable moments come from Driver, as the aforementioned
member of the John Glenn Singers; Troy Nelson, as a saintly army recruit with
an angelic voice; and Jerry Grayson and Sylvia Kauders, as Llewyn’s useless
agent and his secretary/receptionist.
The production values are
top-notch, with Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography inventively framing these
early 1960s clubs in the manner of a Life
Magazine photographer (and, really, this film should have been shot in
black-and-white). Alternatively, when depicting the frozen pall of a New York
winter, Delbonnel captures everything up to the wind-chill factor.
Production designer Jess Gonchor
does equally well constructing the aforementioned clubs, not to mention the
drab little apartments occupied by these various characters, and the impossibly
narrow hallways leading to their respective front doors.
But all this effort doesn’t help
a production that simply isn’t very interesting. I’ve had similar issues with
other Coen brothers efforts, most recently 2009’s utterly bewildering A Serious Man. Like Woody Allen, the
Coens make films for themselves; if the public latches on, so much the better
... but I suspect they’re not bothered either way. In that sense, then, they
approach their art much like Llewyn Davis: an admirable quality, to be sure,
but “admirable” doesn’t always mean “interesting.”
And Llewyn Davis’ story simply
isn’t word pursuing.
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