The Coens' Coldest

Rating: 5/10 (31 January 2014)

Maybe I just didn't get it. Maybe somewhere in the hour and forty-five minutes of Inside Llewyn Davis was a masterpiece that I overlooked. I know for sure, though, that my overall impression of it finally rested on overlong, meandering, boring, pointless, and pretentious.
Llewyn Davis (a very good Oscar Isaac) is a loser. Most characters in the film have another word for it, but we will go with loser. He's stuck in a dead-end situation: trying to make a living as a folk singer in the over-crowded Greenwich Village scene of 1961. He has some serious talent, but he also fails to connect with his audience on a personal level, a sentiment pointed out to him throughout the movie. He is surrounded by others who seem to be much better human beings and perfectly capable performers, but Llewyn consistently dismisses them all as beneath him. Until he needs to crash on their respective couches.
You see, Llewyn is basically homeless. And penniless. There are no royalties coming in from his last record, recorded as part of a folk duo. His partner committed suicide, and now Llewyn is stuck pushing a solo record to no avail. He has recently had sex with best friend Jim's (Justin Timberlake) girlfriend Jean (an equally unpleasant Carey Mulligan), and the baby she carries may or may not belong to Llewyn. They casually trade insults at each other while nonchalantly discussing the abortion they both decide she must undergo.
Once Llewyn runs out of open couches, he hits the road to Chicago, where he hopes to land a gig at a prominent club. He is joined by arrogant and condescending jazz man Roland Turner (John Goodman) and his quiet drifter of a valet, Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund). This sequence is where Inside Llewyn Davis, which starts strong against all odds, slows to a grinding and infuriating stand-still. The 20-25 minutes depicted of the mostly-silent car ride to Chicago serves little purpose for the overall story. Neither Turner nor Johnny Five matter in the long run, and they certainly don't teach us any more about our main character than we already know.
Yet, we continue on with Llewyn. He is consistently kicked around by life, and he consistently kicks around everyone who tries to help him out. He rejects an offer to join a trio, presumably because he is either too hurt by his partner's suicide or simply too headstrong to share the spotlight, or both. He cares more about finding a runaway cat that he inadvertently let slip out than he does consoling the woman who may be bearing his child. And that pretty much sums up Inside Llewyn Davis. There is no arc to the story; indeed, the Coen brothers choose to tell a circular narrative, where one of the final scenes chronologically is presented at the front of the picture. By the time we come full circle, it is hard to care too much for Llewyn's fate.
Yet even here, the brothers Coen refuse to conform to such silly things as closure or resolution. If you've seen the final minutes of their Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men you'll have a feel for the type of ending they employ here. Like No Country, the Coens try to make Llewyn's week-long odyssey an existential search of some sort. Unlike No Country, there are no characters that anchor us in anything real or emotional. Inside Llewyn Davis is as cold and distant as the wintry drive from New York to Chicago, and ultimately one of the biggest letdowns of the awards season.