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Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Real-life stories are nothing like stories in movies, not even movies rich with subplots, or movies that play with timelines. Of course real-life stories are ruled by the inevitable forward movement of time, and in that sense they are linear, but when event A leads to event B, it also, at the same time, leads to events B1, B2, and B3, and each of those events, while perhaps not directly contributing to a selected narrative, are part of the larger story, especially when we’re talking about iconic cultural spaces in history and geography, such as the rock music scene in Seattle in the 1980s and 1990s, the music-art-literature scene in Harlem in the 1920s, and the folk music scene in Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 1960s.
Who was sleeping with whom? How did so-and-so end up contributing vocals to so-and-so’s album? Remember that night at the open mic when that person nobody had ever heard of borrowed so-and-so’s guitar and changed everything? The little anecdotes that each contribute a puzzle-piece of the larger picture might not be the stuff of whole movies, but together they still tell a story, perhaps more like an all-over body tattoo with no specific beginning or end but with an ever-moving, contiguous truth.
I freaking love this nature of storytelling, love the way each little anecdote colors a previously grey area of my knowledge or understanding of a subject. I love the way one person’s account differs with another person’s account, or the way one person’s account fills in some of the holes left by another person’s. Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, while focusing on one week in the life of one musician in that Greenwich Village scene, taps into this patchwork understanding of story and reminds us multiple times why we care: the songs were just so dang good, even when ignoring their historical significance and focusing only on the very moment they are delivered in a recording studio, basement nightclub, or retirement home.
You could call it a slice of life, or you could call it a week-in-the-life-of film. I like both approaches, but I like the movie best as a kind of reverse soundtrack: rather than choose the songs that will best enhance the story, it’s like the writers provide the movie that enhances the songs (produced by T Bone Burnett, of course). There is a reason almost every song is performed from beginning to end here. The soundtrack is the movie.
It is fiction, a bunch of little fictionalized stories of a fictionalized version of Dave Van Ronk and of fictionalized versions of others in the scene, and in these scenes these fictionalized, based-on-real-people characters sing some of the most beautiful songs (in most cases all the way through) in a single film I have ever heard.
Oscar Isaac plays the title character, a struggling musician in the Village, and he gives us Llewyn’s life in the week leading up to Bob Dylan’s arrival on the scene. Llewyn crashes on the couches of the few friends he has, deals with a lover’s pregnancy, fights with his sister, avoids his father, visits his record label manager, and chases an orange cat (named Ulysses, in a cute tribute to O Brother Where Art Thou?) around the city, and everywhere there is the beautiful, beautiful music.
The Coens have said that when they realized their movie didn’t really have a plot they added the orange cat to try and tie everything together. That’s fine with me, but as a metaphor for the success that seems always to be one step ahead of Llewyn, just around the corner or right there in his lap but not quite his yet, it’s even better. And set against the grimy walk-up apartments, grey sidewalks, and dark nightclubs, it is a sweet, soft bit of warmth in a great-looking but subdued film.
Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan as singing duo Jim and Jane are wonderful, and the song they do with a fictionalized version of Tom Paxton is a highlight for me, as is one scene in a park, in which the Mulligan character spells out for Llewyn exactly why he is such a jerk is a dramatic highlight. The Coens bring John Goodman back for another go-around, and he’s pretty good here but his sequence is too long, even as some kind of illustration of possible tensions among different creative musical forms (he plays a fictionalized Doc Pomus, and his driver is a young beat poet).
I’ve written a lot of words to explain that this is one of the best films of the year for me, the kind of thing that makes me glad for film-makers like the Coens and music producers like T Bone Burnett.
9/10 (IMDb rating)
95/100 (Criticker rating)
Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Real-life stories are nothing like stories in movies, not even movies rich with subplots, or movies that play with timelines. Of course real-life stories are ruled by the inevitable forward movement of time, and in that sense they are linear, but when event A leads to event B, it also, at the same time, leads to events B1, B2, and B3, and each of those events, while perhaps not directly contributing to a selected narrative, are part of the larger story, especially when we’re talking about iconic cultural spaces in history and geography, such as the rock music scene in Seattle in the 1980s and 1990s, the music-art-literature scene in Harlem in the 1920s, and the folk music scene in Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 1960s.
Who was sleeping with whom? How did so-and-so end up contributing vocals to so-and-so’s album? Remember that night at the open mic when that person nobody had ever heard of borrowed so-and-so’s guitar and changed everything? The little anecdotes that each contribute a puzzle-piece of the larger picture might not be the stuff of whole movies, but together they still tell a story, perhaps more like an all-over body tattoo with no specific beginning or end but with an ever-moving, contiguous truth.
I freaking love this nature of storytelling, love the way each little anecdote colors a previously grey area of my knowledge or understanding of a subject. I love the way one person’s account differs with another person’s account, or the way one person’s account fills in some of the holes left by another person’s. Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, while focusing on one week in the life of one musician in that Greenwich Village scene, taps into this patchwork understanding of story and reminds us multiple times why we care: the songs were just so dang good, even when ignoring their historical significance and focusing only on the very moment they are delivered in a recording studio, basement nightclub, or retirement home.
You could call it a slice of life, or you could call it a week-in-the-life-of film. I like both approaches, but I like the movie best as a kind of reverse soundtrack: rather than choose the songs that will best enhance the story, it’s like the writers provide the movie that enhances the songs (produced by T Bone Burnett, of course). There is a reason almost every song is performed from beginning to end here. The soundtrack is the movie.
It is fiction, a bunch of little fictionalized stories of a fictionalized version of Dave Van Ronk and of fictionalized versions of others in the scene, and in these scenes these fictionalized, based-on-real-people characters sing some of the most beautiful songs (in most cases all the way through) in a single film I have ever heard.
Oscar Isaac plays the title character, a struggling musician in the Village, and he gives us Llewyn’s life in the week leading up to Bob Dylan’s arrival on the scene. Llewyn crashes on the couches of the few friends he has, deals with a lover’s pregnancy, fights with his sister, avoids his father, visits his record label manager, and chases an orange cat (named Ulysses, in a cute tribute to O Brother Where Art Thou?) around the city, and everywhere there is the beautiful, beautiful music.
The Coens have said that when they realized their movie didn’t really have a plot they added the orange cat to try and tie everything together. That’s fine with me, but as a metaphor for the success that seems always to be one step ahead of Llewyn, just around the corner or right there in his lap but not quite his yet, it’s even better. And set against the grimy walk-up apartments, grey sidewalks, and dark nightclubs, it is a sweet, soft bit of warmth in a great-looking but subdued film.
Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan as singing duo Jim and Jane are wonderful, and the song they do with a fictionalized version of Tom Paxton is a highlight for me, as is one scene in a park, in which the Mulligan character spells out for Llewyn exactly why he is such a jerk is a dramatic highlight. The Coens bring John Goodman back for another go-around, and he’s pretty good here but his sequence is too long, even as some kind of illustration of possible tensions among different creative musical forms (he plays a fictionalized Doc Pomus, and his driver is a young beat poet).
I’ve written a lot of words to explain that this is one of the best films of the year for me, the kind of thing that makes me glad for film-makers like the Coens and music producers like T Bone Burnett.
9/10 (IMDb rating)
95/100 (Criticker rating)