Never has an elegy been so full of life, incident and gentle, comic tragedy.

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2014)

In a movie industry that encourages simplicity and accessibility, the Coen brothers and their almost uniformly excellent, resolutely quirky films have always set themselves apart. Where most other directors and writers would celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, Joel and Ethan Coen craft movies that practically take delight in the futility of human endeavour. Life and its attendant twists and turns, their oddly-named characters discover, just happen to you, however you might try to dictate your own terms. Even their fizziest of comedies have a darker soul buried beneath the laughs.
In much the same vein, Inside Llewyn Davis defies easy categorisation. It's ostensibly about the titular Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a struggling folk singer who couch-surfs across New York to avoid sleeping on the streets. For the week in his life that the camera stays with him, Llewyn is hunting for the cat that slipped out of his grasp when he was staying with the wealthy, Jewish Gorfeins (Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett). Along the way, he tries to ply his trade, hunting down a job opportunity in Chicago that might free him from his stints at the tiny, smoky Gaslight Café tucked inside New York's bustling Greenwich Village.
Tucked away within the meandering narrative, however, is a soulful meditation on the fickle nature of fate, fame and fortune. Frequently, movies and well-meaning mentors tell us that we are the architects of our own success: if we want something badly enough, if we're talented and work hard, the universe will provide us with a happy ending.
The tragic folk ballad that is Llewyn Davis, the hapless anti-hero of his own life story, tells us something quite different. Here is someone enormously gifted - this would be a different film entirely if Llewyn only thought he was a good singer - who has never managed to grab onto the spotlight when it flickers over him. He shares it, briefly, with singers who will go on to do far greater things than him. (Watch out for the iconic tousled mane and harmonica of the man who will soon change the face of folk - and popular - music forever.) Money, fame and joy seem to elude Llewyn at every turn, despite (and sometimes due to) his best efforts to get by.
Inside Llewyn Davis also works as both road trip and character study. As we travel with Llewyn from Manhattan's classy Upper West Side to the narrow, boxed-in apartment of his best friend Jim (Justin Timberlake), we get a peek into Llewyn's tenuous relationships, even the best of which are wrung dry of favours and predicated on lies. In an almost callous way, he fights with Jean (Carey Mulligan), Jim's girlfriend, over an indiscretion, and in the next breath, lunges desperately after a cat that bears a passing resemblance to the one he lost.
Llewyn's determination to do whatever it takes to get noticed - to get a job - also underscores the surreal road trip he endures to Chicago. This is perhaps the most characteristically Coenesque stretch of the entire film, the black humour played with a twist of sarcasm and irony as Llewyn is trapped in the car with his fellow passengers. He must suffer the derision of pushy jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) and the casual disinterest of beat poet Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), until circumstances - odd as they inevitably are in a Coen film - separate them all again.
The performances in the film are, in a word, sublime. A struggling actor for many years, Isaac must have seen the parallels between Llewyn's story and his own. This is his moment in the limelight, however, and he knows it. Isaac plays the highs and lows of the Coen brothers' melancholic script with marvellous self-assurance, and is hauntingly note-perfect in the songs and stories he spins for unappreciative audience members. Mulligan, Timberlake and Goodman all deliver memorable supporting turns, the first two even contributing a beautifully-harmonised rendition of Five Hundred Miles (with Stark Sands) to the soundtrack.
Anyone looking for the same oddball dynamics and sensibilities that the Coen brothers have honed to a fine precision in films like Fargo and No Country For Old Men should take heed: Inside Llewyn Davis is made of gentler, subtler stuff. It's a snow-washed blend of amusing drama and bitter comedy, played at half the tempo of the Coens' more frenetic output. As such, it might appear languid, and even a bit lifeless on a first viewing. But it's that rare kind of film which lodges itself firmly in the heart - or perhaps the soul - as it makes the most melancholic, magical music for a man who's slipped between the cracks.