I get it, many others missed the point.

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2014)

Inside Llewyn Davis is the latest offering of the unstoppable Coen brother movie machine, and perhaps the most sophisticated. Unlike Fargo, or No Country For Old Men, they don't beat you over head in this one, with obvious characters for you to hate and love. In this movie, they make you figure it out yourself.
Llewyn Davis is a struggling folk musician, coming of age in the glorious folk scene of the early 60's in Greenwich Village. It should be a romantic orgy of self-exploration, overnight successes, and the coming promise of free love.
But that's not what the Coen brothers deliver. They give you a horrifically flawed individual, wandering through this mystical landscape, but somehow unable to reap the benefits. Llewyn Davis has the look, he has the sound, he has the songs, he is brimming with talent. But over and over again, all of his experiences and relationships fall away into nothingness, and his music never captures audiences thirsty for the music that moves them.
That's because, Inside Llewyn Davis, is nothing at all. This is brilliantly laid out by the Coens, when Davis goes on a quest to find a Chicago music manager, who might get his career back on track. The manager asks him to play something from his album (oddly enough, the same title as the movie). What does he find? An empty shell, albeit a talented one.
This movie is brilliantly filmed, richly layered with characters, and perfectly plausible as a true story. But this is all just a vehicle for a singular Coen message: if you don't care about anything in this world, if you don't engage life, embrace others, develop meaningful relationships, develop yourself as a human being, then all the talent and opportunity in the world won't help you - your life will be nothing more than a tormented waste of time.
It's a message for the ages, a warning for today's society, a truth that time cannot destroy, cloaked in romance and wonder at the dawn of the most dramatic cultural awakening in North American history.
So, if you're looking for something deeper, not satisfied with explosions, happy endings, and worn-out clichés; if you want a movie that will make you reflect on your own life in a way that might make you clutch to those you care about just a little bit closer, then I recommend you take the ride, and see this film.