Oh! What an unlucky man he was

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2013)

Llewyn Davis's (Oscar Isaac) life is scattered and fragmented into bits and pieces as he seeks to make it as a folk singer in Greenwich Village's 1961 music scene.
Many reviews of this movie comment that Llewyn is unsympathetic, rude, an asshole, out of touch, obnoxious, unrelatable to, etc. etc. Personally I think the Coen brothers set out to make a movie about a character struggling to make it in a profession that is incredibly difficult to "make it in." You need talent. Sure. But you also need luck. Or whatever you want to call it: fortuitous circumstances; a fairy angel over your shoulder; serendipitous connections; being in the right place at the right time.
Llewyn has talent. Yes. Luck? No. Things just don't pan out for him. Partly because of his personality. Partly because of circumstances. It doesn't help that he comes from a working class background. His father was a seaman. Llewyn put in a stint as a seaman. The $11,500 his family's house sold for is going to pay for his dad's upkeep at a nursing facility. Money's tight. He ends up, like many artists did, sleeping over on someone's couch or bumming money off someone. What I didn't see too much evidence of were booze and grass, which would have been floating around aplenty in early '60s Greenwich Village.
The music scene in 1961 was beginning to morph as the social climate changed. The year 1964 saw the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. The Vietnam war was heating up. American values were changing at an ever increasing pace, especially among younger Americans. The Counterculture was beginning to emerge. Certain musicians were there at that moment and captured in haunting lyrics the seriousness of the changes taking place and rode the wave.
In the very last scenes Llewyn is tipped off by Jean (Carey Mulligan) that he has a chance to make it that night at The Gaslight in the Village where a NY Times critic is going to be in the audience. He strums on his guitar and sings a wonderful, evocative "Hang me, oh hang me." But the next musician to follow him is Bob Dylan. Dylan's unique style, raspy piercing unforgettable voice, and musical poetry hit the scene. And Dylan rode the wave. And Dylan went through his own set of hardships on the rocky road to success. One man doesn't make it. One man does. That's how life works. No one said it was fair.
This movie doesn't have the whacky offbeat craziness and absurdity of some Coen movies like Fargo and The Big Lebowski, which is okay by me. Possibly the most engrossing character in the movie is the crippled irascible but eloquent jazz musician, Roland Turner (John Goodman), who occupies the backseat of a car heading for Chicago that Llewyn has hitchhiked himself into. He continually pokes Llewyn with one of his canes to make his point (he carries two to walk with because of his disability). Turner is a certifiable Coen-type character and Goodman renders him impeccably.
The acting is well done. The story is circular. Where Llewyn's life is at the movie's beginning is where it is at the end. Nowhere. A talented musician who couldn't smash through the barrier. One other point. The movie captures to a tee both the atmosphere and the brutal winter weather of NYC and Chicago in the early '60s. Winter in both cities makes Llewyn's lot in life even more a hardship. Still most definitely worth a watch.
8/10