Entirely Pointless

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2014)

I love the Coen Brothers for movies like O Brother Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski and I expected something great from Inside Llewyn Davis, especially because it has received such glowing reviews and has garnered so many award nominations.
Inside Llewyn Davis is dreary, pointless, and unpleasant. The main character is not likable, and the audience's distaste for Llewyn is solidified when he leaves a cat stranded with a drug-addicted old man on the side of the highway. The other characters are more Coen Brothers trademark oddballs, though none of them contribute in any meaningful way to the main character or the story. John Goodman, for example, is hilarious, but his character is absolutely purposeless.
It seems to me that the Coen Brothers wanted to make a movie about folk music and to work with T Bone Burnett again, but lacked the motivation to make anything truly substantive. Even the music around which the movie is centered still lacks gravity, perhaps because nothing that is presented on screen has any real emotional pull or interest. It has drawn supporters from the art-house crowd who like the avant-garde but who cannot pretend to understand it. The point of this movie is that there is no point, and try though I did to respect this idea, it is ultimately a waste of time to make a movie to present.
If this movie wins Best Picture, I will be very upset. This movie is not innovative, interesting, or remarkable. It is depressing and ugly.