The Coens’ melancholy folk comedy is funny, moving and worth the patience it asks for. Oscar Isaac makes its difficult singer worth following, though the wandering middle could test even a sympathetic listener.
With Inside Llewyn Davis, Joel and Ethan Coen ask us to spend time with a musician whose talent does not make him pleasant company or guarantee him a living. We recommend this funny, quietly painful film, with one reservation about its wandering middle. The interest lies in watching someone make his own difficulties worse while still having something worth hearing. Oscar Isaac plays a struggling folk singer in Greenwich Village during a snowy week in 1961.
Isaac refuses to make Llewyn’s bad behaviour secretly adorable. The pride and resentment are wearing, and we can understand why this man struggles among other people without deciding that every setback is deserved. We were moved when Isaac sang the folk songs in full; the feeling in his voice made us care about a man we had begun to dislike. He does not need an apologetic speech to win our attention. The musical performances give us time to listen to him.
The music also explains why this works as a film about artistic ambition. Llewyn can sing, but hearing him does not settle the question of what he ought to expect from a career. The Coens, editing as well as writing and directing, allow complete songs to occupy time that another film might spend hurrying towards the next opportunity or disappointment. That patience lets us judge the musician for ourselves, and the singing has an immediacy that helps justify it. The performances were recorded live.
Bruno Delbonnel’s photography makes the snowy setting feel inhospitable, discouraging any wish to exchange our lives for Llewyn’s. Jess Gonchor’s production design gives the folk scene a convincing everyday setting, supported by Mary Zophres’s period clothes. We can enjoy looking at their work without losing sight of how uncomfortable this life is. The detail serves a film concerned with getting through a week, rather than celebrating a decade.
The Coens are less sure-footed when the journey takes over from the singer. The road-trip stretch has the same dark humour, but it goes on long enough for the attention to drift; the editing that serves the songs so well is less helpful here. There are also moments when the amusement at Llewyn’s failings feels too easy, as though his being difficult has settled every question about him. Isaac keeps that from becoming the whole film. His performance holds our sympathy through passages where the writing seems more interested in devising another frustration for him.
A more reassuring musical drama would let us take a good voice as proof that better days were coming. Here we can wonder how good Llewyn is, how much trouble he causes himself and how much anyone could change by working harder. The Coens leave us to think about that while listening, with no need to agree on whether this man deserves a career. At 105 minutes, it asks for patience but not a heroic commitment. Give it an evening when the singing can have your full attention.
