Not what folk music was about

Rating: 6/10 (20 March 2014)

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) was written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen.
The film is about a struggling folk musician who can't support himself by singing. We're to assume that he's right at the brink of the folk revival of the 60's, and he's poised to become a star. All he has to do is earn enough money to survive until Bob Dylan and Joan Baez come along to make folk music profitable.
The story doesn't work for me. In the first place, Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) isn't all that talented. (We heard folk music in Ann Arbor, NYC, and Newport in the 1960's, and Llewyn would have been considered OK, but nothing special).
He doesn't appear to have any feel for the music in the sense of where it originated, who may have sung it before, and what historical significance it might have.
He makes fun of an older folk singer, who may be meant to represent someone like Jean Ritchie from Kentucky. Urban folk musicians respected people who learned folk music through the oral tradition. They didn't make fun of them. (Anyway, as a performing artist, Llewyn should have realized how vicious it is to heckle an onstage performer.)
Folk music in the 1960's was always allied with labor struggles, civil rights, and other progressive causes, but Llewyn appears apolitical.
In the movie posters, he's shown carrying a cat. That makes us think that he may not have a place to sleep, but he's not going to abandon his cat. Actually, it's not his cat, and he does abandon it eventually.
Finally, his behavior towards his sister is rotten, he betrays his best friend by having an affair with his friend's partner, and he's cruel to an older couple who try to help him.
Even though the Coen brothers are talented directors, I don't see why people would enjoy a film about a low-talent, unlikeable loser. If you still want to see it, it will work well on DVD.
P.S. This movie includes a road trip from NYC to Chicago. Note to Coen brothers: In 1961 the route between those two cities was not uncharted frontier territory. There were highways and expressways and people used them.