Not much of anything happens in Inside
Llewyn Davis. Perpetually bundled up in a corduroy blazer, a wool gray
scarf and ragged fingerless gloves, the scruffy, curly-haired title character wanders
through the streets of early 1960s Greenwich Village with a bulky guitar case
in one hand and a restless orange cat cradled in the other. He mostly seems to
spend his days trudging from door to door in search of an inevitably low-paying
gig or a friend willing to let him crash on their couch for a day or two. I’m
not sure he cracks a smile even once during the movie. It’s not really a
spoiler to say that, in defiance of the traditional Hollywood narrative arc,
Llewyn never finds his breakout moment; at the end, he’s quite literally in the
same place he was when the film started.
This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for the Coen brothers’ new
flick, and on the surface, the movie seems slight, forgettable, but in fact, the
straight-faced, deliberately monotonous attitude it adopts toward its subjects gives
the whole thing a distinctive allure not suggested by the threadbare plot. It’s
that rare period piece that shows no nostalgia for the era it’s depicting. Gone
are the usual scenes of carefree, substance-assisted revelry, the rose-tinted
characterizations of ‘60s counterculture, and the youthful idealism and
excitement often associated with that tumultuous decade. Instead, working with
a low-key minimalism at odds with the heightened quirkiness that typifies even
their more serious work, the Coens draw audiences into the desperate tedium of
Llewyn’s everyday life with the detached precision of documentarians, showing
the difficulties he faces without romanticizing or wallowing in his poverty.
The stubbornly drab clothing and some gorgeous cinematography by Bruno
Delbonnel so saturated of color the film occasionally looks like it was shot in
black and white reinforce the somber atmosphere. Shots of the murky Gaslight
Café where the characters frequently perform, of almost impossibly narrow
hallways and roads that stretch straight toward some unseen point beyond a flat
horizon create a sense of claustrophobia, reflecting how trapped Llewyn feels
in an inescapable cycle of failure that’s partly of his own making.
Although the movie never reaches
oppressive levels of grimness, its only real moments of emotional release come
during the songs, which crop up regularly enough that it’s hard to imagine
anyone who doesn’t care for Bob Dylan-esque folk music enjoying the film.
Normally, Llewyn comes off as an apathetic cipher, Oscar Isaac’s wide, piercing
eyes registering a constant mixture of boredom and irritation whenever other
people deign to speak to him, but when he has a guitar in his hands, he becomes
alive, dropping his carefully constructed defenses and baring his soul for
audiences to see (or, more accurately, hear). With his gravelly, achingly
soulful voice, the hypnotic Isaac perfectly captures the power of folk music at
its most stripped-down and raw, the way a good singer can take an ancient,
well-worn tune and make it sound completely fresh and intensely personal; as
our eponymous hero says, if it doesn’t feel new and never gets old, it’s a folk
song. At its worst, folk music can be kitschy and overly precious, but when
done properly, it’s like the blues, expressing hardship and the simple pain of
living with an unbearable intimacy no other genre can achieve. No matter how
many other people may be around, a good folk song seems as though it was
written and sung for you and only you. Inside
Llewyn Davis may not be enamored by its characters’ lifestyles, but it
wholeheartedly appreciates and celebrates their music.
Many of the Coen brothers’ films
involve a series of encounters with offbeat, idiosyncratic characters, and
their latest effort is no different, though the supporting cast isn’t quite as
memorable as, say, Raising Arizona or
The Big Lebowski. The highlights are
Carey Mulligan as Llewyn’s friend and one-time sex partner Jean Berkey, a
nicely no-nonsense, prickly turn for an actress too often stuck in cherubic
roles, and a colorful John Goodman and stoic, near-silent Garrett Hedlund as
two of the most awkward road trip companions ever. And then, there’s Ulysses,
the sleek, frequently elusive cat who probably shares more screen time with
Llewyn than any human and who serves as the only conflict to actually get resolved
by the film’s end.
Still, none of them are close to as fully-realized as Llewyn, who is on
screen for virtually the entire running time. After a decade of being confined
to uninteresting supporting roles in mediocre movies, the thirty-three year old
Isaac has finally found a part that allows him to share his considerable talent
not only as an actor, but also as a singer. Like the movie itself, he aims for
an understated coolness that feels so natural it would be easy to overlook the
skill needed to maintain such restraint and to know when to loosen up a bit.
The moments when Isaac does open up and exposes Llewyn’s fears and
vulnerabilities are heartbreaking, as in a tense dinner scene with the Gorfeins
(his older, Upper West Side-dwelling friends) or his final performance of the
film’s signature song “Fare Thee Well”. By not bothering with high-minded
pretensions or striving to convey some Big, Important Message, Inside Llewyn Davis strikes closer to
the heart of what it’s really like to be an aspiring artist than many more
ambitious, complex films. Though not as pretty or warmly satisfying as a
success story, its journey through disappointment and the stasis that results
from unrelenting setbacks reaches its own kind of catharsis as Llewyn realizes
that sad truth anyone unable to live up to their own hopes and expectations
eventually grows to accept: this is it. This is your life.
Photo Link:
No comments:
Post a Comment