A musical time bubble

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2014)

What I loved about this movie is how timeless all the songs felt. It looked like the songs were mostly live takes and a bit of research backs that up. Most of the songs also belonged to one person ( Dave van Ronk) which also added to the authenticity of the story.
The most interesting part of the movie was the way in which the songs were presented as natural conversations of performances in context of a week in the life of the lead character.
In future this movie will be remembered for the songs and that is fitting. When they were being performed time seemed to stand still. Even the song he performed for the Chicago club guy ( a bad choice of song - I think) was going somewhere.
The other striking thing about the movie is the weird feeling of being out of sync with everything around it. Llewyn as the lead character see the future as flying cars and that contrasts greatly with his friends, his sister and other acquaintances.
They mostly see him as an entertaining dinner guest ( the Goresteins) or a loser who has slept on their couches too many times.
The real world flickers around him a few times and the possibility that he should go to Akron is raised. When he visits his father who has advanced dementia there is almost no recognition. But then Llewyn plays a favourite song of his Dad's.
Just for a tiny moment we see something in his Dad's eyes and then it goes. The possibility of another life outside of a musical spiral on the breadline does seem to occur to Llewyn and he steps in that direction but never quite gets there.