The latest Coen Brothers' offering 'Inside Llewyn Davis' is a welcome return to their deadpan comedy mode. It's less uncompromising than Fargo, but sharper and more human than 'Burn After Reading' or 'The Hudsucker Proxy' (arguably the Coen's weakest works to date).
It's a slyly ahistorical account of the Greenwich Village folk music scene that briefly flared in the early sixties, before disappearing under the weight of its own self-appointed profundity. It features many of the Coen's hallmarks: pitch-perfect music, cracking dialogue and, obviously, a scene-stealing John Goodman cameo.
Loss, and its consequences, is at the heart of the story. The eponymous, cat-wielding anti-hero of the title is, at first, a character that is very hard to like. Davis (Oscar Issac) has an uncanny knack of alienating seemingly everyone around him (with the exception of his companion for much of the film, Ulysses the cat). There are clever references to many of the Coen's previous films here, both visual (the snowy scenes of Miller's Crossing) and thematic (the struggling musicians of O' Brother, Where Art Though?).
Indeed, references to O Brother pepper the entire film. Davis's struggles echo the driving theme of O' Brother, the fantastical journey of Homer's Odyssey. Indeed, the 'journey within a journey' provides the highlight of the film. The reluctant road trip to Chicago in the second half of the film finally gives us an inkling of what exactly is 'inside' Davis.
But the story takes a much broader comedic swipe than simply referencing the film-makers' previous efforts. Particularly enjoyable is Justin Timberlake playing a pretentious (but commercially savvy) folk singer version of his pop-star self. There is also the enlisted-soldier-by-day, folk-singer-by-night character who specialises in a crowd pleasing, but ultimately bland, version of folk (prompting Davis to ask, somewhat rhetorically, if the anodyne performer has 'a higher function?').
The film's greatest achievement is that, despite the main character's obvious failings as a human being, by journey's end you undoubtedly feel for Davis. His last gasp attempt at musical success in Chicago is by turns touching and devastating. When he exasperatingly exclaims to his pregnant ex-girlfriend Jean (Carey Mulligan) 'I'm done' you feel a new reality crashing down around him; all hope of a musical career has been permanently extinguished.
For most artists, simply being ambitious and talented is no guarantee of success. Llewyn Davis hammers this home with a touching humanity rarely seen on film.
