A Serious Man
2009
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Dec 6, 2013 · We cannot imagine Llewyn Davis happy. The self-defeating Sisyphus of the new film written, directed, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen is the first person the viewer lays eyes on in the movie.
92% Tomatometer 293 Reviews 74% Audience Score 25,000+ Ratings In 1961 New York City, folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is at a crossroads. Guitar in hand, he struggles against seemingly ...
- (293)
- Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
- R
- Oscar Isaac
Dec 5, 2013 · “Inside Llewyn Davis” is an intoxicating, somewhat surreal ramble through the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961.
- Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
- A.O. Scott
- 104 min
Inside Llewyn Davis is another Coen Brothers masterpiece. Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 29, 2023. Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand. This is the Coens in bittersweet mode, a little...
- The Awards They Are a-Comin'
- Verdict
By Leigh Singer
Posted: May 21, 2013 9:53 am
No one succeeds at failure like the Coen Brothers. From exuberant comic dazzlers (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski) to muted character studies (The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Serious Man), their lead characters are expert underachievers, whose relentless, blackly humorous misfortunes are lovingly detailed by their unforgiving makers. The Coens, unlike their creations, get the job done.
Like Bob Dylan, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a Minnesotan Jew who headed to New York – just like the Coens themselves – striving to make it in the early 1960s folk music scene. He’s already cut a record as part of a duo (Marcus Mumford, minus Sons), whose partner killed himself and now he’s left peddling a solo effort, Inside Llewyn Davis, around Greenwich Village, scraping together coffee shop gigs, getting stiffed by his penny-pinching manager and, in an early scene, beaten up for seemingly no reason. If you’re meant to suffer for your art, then Llewyn Davis should be destined for all-time greatness.
That he isn’t of course, is the great cosmic joke the Coens play, though arguably with more overt heart and empathy than before. If Dylan is the self-confident joker flipping lyrics cards in the video to Subterranean Homesick Blues, Llewyn Davis would be skulking around in the alley behind him, like Allen Ginsberg, stranded in the shadows.It’s not that Davis has no talent: the atmospheric opening scene, all spotlight and cigarette smoke, with Isaac doing his own impressive singing, makes that clear; but he can’t seem to catch a break. Oh, and he’s a bit of a jerk – an abrasive, anti-social freeloader. “You don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s why all the same shit is going to keep happening to you,” rival folk singer Jean Berkey (Carey Mulligan) rants at him. “And also because you’re an asshole.”
Jean has a particular beef with Llewyn, as it may be him and not her sweetly naïve husband / musical partner Jim (Justin Timberlake), who made her pregnant. But there’s a wider malaise going on here. As Llewyn couch-surfs around town, even the small task of looking after a ginger tabby cat proves beyond him. The muted, wintry landscape, beautifully rendered by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (expertly subbing for the Coens Bond-bound resident visual genius Roger Deakins), spreads a paralysing chill.
At this stage, the Coens are working with a confidence and a maturity stripped of a need to razzle-dazzle. While their protagonists often find no direction home, they transport you again and again. Don’t be fooled by the seemingly minor key; just because Inside Llewyn Davis doesn’t have the genre trappings of a Fargo or No Country for Old Men, or t...
- Leigh Singer
- 3 min
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.
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Jan 10, 2014 · Inside Llewyn Davis: Directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. With Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, Ethan Phillips. A week in the life of a young singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961.
