If Bob Dylan were Jesus Christ, this would be 'Life of Brian'

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2014)

'Inside Llewyn Davis' has quite a small scope: a week in Greenwich Village in 1961 (based on the Dave Van Ronk memoir - DVR released an album called 'Inside Dave Van Ronk') with a short excursion to Chicago: in the dark, which isn't much cinematic bang for your buck these days. But it's definitely a Coen Brothers movie, with all the rich black humour, mystery and tragedy that implies. Quite Barton Fink in places.
Llewyn is an also-ran folksinger on the Village scene who's a complete ratbag; in the first ten minutes he gets beaten up for heckling another performer, loses his university-professor patrons' prize ginger tomcat, and discovers his dead partner's widow is pregnant (possibly not by him). The movie is actually a flashback leading up to the beating, as he couch- surfs and hustles his way from the Gaslight Club to Columbia Records to the Merchant Seaman's Union. Via Chicago.
Of course, you expect the Coens to have been clever, and what is clever is the way that Llewyn (Oscar Isaac, the only Oscar this will get) actually performs his very downbeat folksongs full length in a completely convincing way, except that as Albert Grossman (F. Murray Abraham) in Chicago says, 'I don't see a lot of money here'. Benjamin Pike as the 'young Bob' at the end, and playing over the credits, is actually refreshing and pleasant after Llewyn's self-absorbed misery.
Is Llewyn suffering from grief at the recent suicide of his partner Jim, who jumped off the George Washington bridge? Is Llewyn headed the same way? Is John Goodman really a master of the black arts, able to control Llewyn's life remotely? This is what the Coens do - they put questions in your mind all the time, and don't usually bother to answer. Which is fine by me, I just want to watch ILD again and soon.