Not the 60s people, scene, nor music... and a failure as fiction too.

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2014)

So let's completely forget that Llewyn Davis is not Dave Van Ronk. Let's forget that there are historical inaccuracies in the scenery and other parts of the film (the Gaslight was tiny, not the cavernous club in the film, there was no alley behind that café, I'm somewhat doubtful that Davis would have been playing a 1928 or 1929 Gibson L-1 that looked so clean, when Llewyn is playing guitar in the car on the way to Chicago, he's using a Shubb capo. The film takes place in 1961; Shubb capos weren't available until 1980, while Llewyn is making a payphone call on the elevated subway platform (Woodside/61st Street), a modern 7 train pulls into the station on the opposite track, despite being set in 1961, Llewyn passes a poster for Disney's "The Incredible Journey" which was released in 1963, there is a Lava Lamp shown in one scene. The Lava Lamp wasn't invented until 1963 and wasn't available for purchase until 1965) let's forget everything and just approach this as a complete work of fiction.
Plot: The story doesn't seem to go anywhere. The main character tries to find his way in the folk music scene but doesn't have much success, nor does he seem to put anything resembling a passionate effort into it. He goes through some moves and attempts a few things, but they seem half-hearted. Maybe he's just completely discouraged but he doesn't seem to invoke much sympathy in his attempts. Things just seem to happen to him and the people around him, oft-times for inexplicable reasons. Which may be due to...
Characters and their development or lack thereof: There just doesn't seem to be anyone likable in this movie. Llewyn Davis is just not a very likable character. He's belligerent to the point of being hostile, self-absorbed, seemingly uncaring about the people around him, even his fellow performers. And yet he sings beautiful folk ballads about royalty and people and you wonder how the hell is he connecting to these songs when he can't seem to connect to actual humans? Now maybe that's supposed to be part of his "mystery" but I just find it confusing. There is no joy in Llewyn Davis' life, and so it's hard to really care about him. In fact it's hard to care about anyone, they're all pretty self-absorbed and unlikeable.
Jean (Carey Mulligan) is another mystery. We know nothing about her other than she had a brief affair with Llewyn and hates him for it, is married to Jim (whom she says she cares about), but there's no character here... who is she, what does she think, where is she going? There's nothing to really like or dislike about her - she's just there.
Jim (Justin Timberlake) is a cipher. Who is he and what does he want? He floats in and out, sings a song, gets a record deal for a commercial "folk" song he wrote (we have no idea how that came about other than to surmise that a John Hammond Sr-like figure had something to do with it)... he's a clean-cut nice guy but why should we care? He seems completely oblvious of what's going on around him.
Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) may be the only likable character in the film because he seems to actually like the people around him. But he's depicted as a Forrest Gump-like simpleton character, so even his likability needs to be tempered.
Jazz man Roland Turner (John Goodman) is a junkie who dislikes everything except for the really bad beat poetry that his "valet" Johnny Five (Garret Hedlund) spouts out. It's a relief when he's finally out of the film.
Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), a not-even thinly disguised Albert Grossman, owner of the Gate of Horn club in Chicago, has nothing to make anyone like him... but then neither did Albert Grossman. He's only in it for the money and that's just the way it was.
Pappi Corsicato (Max Casella), the owner of the Gaslight Cafe, is thoroughly sleazy and only books women who sleep with him.
Al Cody (Adam Driver) is another folk singer who Llewyn crashes with and he might be a likable soul, but he's another nonentity.
None of these or the other characters ever really develop a persona other than their surface personalities that just seem to be people you really wouldn't want to hang around with.
Music: Some of the songs are quite nice, but what seems to be missing a lot of the time is the joy and passion that one would expect from this music and this time. Many of the songs are rather syrupy version of songs that originally had more of an edge to them.
In all fairness the film probably does a relatively decent job in depicting the transition from people singing actual folk songs to the singer-songwriter school of folk music that Dylan, Paxton, Neil, Ochs, Anderson and others would soon usher in. But unlike "O Brother, Where Art Thou", "Fargo", "The Big Lebowski", or other Coen Brothers films there's really noting about "Inside Llewyn Davis" that's going to make you want to go back and see it over and over again.
Buy Dave Van Ronk and Elijah Wald's "The Mayor Of MacDougal Street" , get some of Dave's albums (especially the new Smithsonian release "Down in Washington Square") and have yourself a really good time!