Inside Llewyn Davis is half empty.

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2014)

For every Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel in the early 60s you probably had a thousand Llewyn Davis's; semi talented folkies who kept the dream alive by starving and crashing at other peoples pads, straining for that break, the brass ring remaining elusive. Inside Llewyn Davis is a week in the life of one aspirant whose dream is mostly a nightmare.
Davis (Oscar Issac) opens with our protagonist warbling a melancholy tune at a Greenwich Village coffee house where neophytes try their luck. After his set he gets punched out by a mysterious stranger in the alley, finds out he has a fellow folkie pregnant, is being grossly under represented by his agent and has it revealed to him that he is a dad with a two year old in Akron. He is also sidled with a friends cat that he eventually abandons. He decides to try his luck in Chicago when he has opportunity to hitch a ride with a jazz artist and poet. Chicago it turns out is as welcoming as NYC and he is soon headed back after an audition that offers some daylight which he rejects outright.
The Brothers Coen once again deliver a unique and original character in the self absorbed, irresponsible Davis. A moody ungrateful sponger you still find yourself rooting for him as he chases the elusive dream of making it big while refusing to confront reality. The overall narrative itself however is loose and raggedy with a patchwork quilt of stilted scenes and our hero literally going in circles with the contrived road trip, though John Goodman as the zonked out jazz cat does have a moment dissembling folk with his jazz comparison.
The Coens do an excellent job of utilizing the cold harsh winter to emphasize Davis's wearying struggle as well as portray the times by lining the sidewalks and some expansive shots with massive eight cylinder behemoths covered in winter grime. There is also a wonderfully energized scene where Davis and the boys do a studio take of a Ray Stevens ( Please Mr. Custer, Alley Oop) type comedy tune popular back then that lifts Inside from its morose gloom momentarily before Llewlyn once again self implodes by signing away the royalties for cash upfront.
The Coens are once again to be commended for continually going against the grain of formulaic main stream film in both character and scenario but with Davis little of the supporting cast is fleshed out and the ancillary characters that inform their past works with telling incidentals fail to register amid the glum theme here and the film like one of the Oldsmobile 88s mired in a snow bank spins its wheels much of the time.