DVD Review – The Coen Brothers do the 1960s folk music scene…

Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coen Brothers

I’ve been taking advantage of my daughter being on holiday with her Dad to catch up on TV and movies. I binge-watched Broadchurch (loved) and The Honorable Woman (good, but confusing and irritating), but finished my week by watching the Coen Brother’s latest movie from earlier this year on Blu-Ray.

As a folk music fan brought up on Peter, Paul and Mary and being no stranger to Bob Dylan, I was bound to appreciate this film, and it’s one of the Coen’s finest, moving straight into my film faves.

Llewyn Davis is a folk singer struggling to make ends meet in New York. It’s winter and he’s homeless, moving from couch to couch between friends and relations around Greenwich Village. He doesn’t help himself, being a martyr to his own brand of earnest folk, and intolerant of others. He was part of a duo, they might have made it, but Mikey threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.

The film follows Llewyn over the course of a week in 1961, which starts off with him accidentally letting his hosts’ cat out and locking himself out in the process, so he is left to wander the streets with guitar and cat until he can return it.

Another night, another sofa, another evening in the folk club watching other people play, another girlfriend in trouble. Luckily Jean’s new (unknowing) man can rustle up a recording session to put a few dollars his way. Later in the week, Llewyn makes a pilgrimage to Chicago for a chance to impress a music mogul, and the failure of this trip will begin to show him how his dream will end…

I hadn’t heard of Oscar Isaac, whose wisecracks and moody outbursts as Llewyn keep getting him into trouble. He was brilliant as the brooding folk-singer and he played and sang all his character’s songs. Fans will probably recognise the hand of O Brother Where Art Thou? collaborator T Bone Burnett in the soundtrack, in this case aided by Marcus Mumford (I’ve ordered the CD).

If Oscar Isaac was brilliant, all the supporting cast were too – from Carey Mulligan as the embittered Jean and a beardy Justin Timberlake as her husband to an extended cameo from John Goodman as the elderly madman in a syrup (of figs = wig) being driven to Chicago.

However, just like the Fedora hats being a recurring motif in the Coen brothers’ earlier feature Miller’s Crossing, Inside Llewyn Davis also has its own idée fixe, which upstages the actors at every possible opportunity – the cats. After Llewyn’s initial problems with his friends’ cat, a ginger cat crops up all over the place.

The Coen brothers have heightened the feel of it being set during the winter, and so many of the locations being very dingy be they bedsits or the folk clubs by using a washed out palette of colours and always grey skies. When a bit of colour intrudes, it fair zings out of the screen. The whole film looks stunning in its dullness, if you know what I mean.

Comedy is never far from the Coen’s minds. There were some great laugh out loud set pieces – when Jim (Timberlake) is teaching Llewyn a pop song in the recording session for instance, but it was quietly funny in their ironic way all the way through, even though the story was full of Llewyn’s increasing despair.  I loved it. (10/10)

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Source: Own copy. To explore further on Amazon UK, please click below:
Inside Llewyn Davis [DVD] [2014], written & directed by the Coen Brothers.
Inside Llewyn Davis: Original Soundtrack Recording

0 thoughts on “DVD Review – The Coen Brothers do the 1960s folk music scene…

  1. winstonsdad says:

    Loved this one they caught the time it seemed in such an understated way love small homage to dylan at end in the gaslight one first places he played

  2. drharrietd says:

    I too love the Coens (just been watching Millers Crossing) but haven’t managed to see this yet. You’ve made me long to! Thanks.

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