Cinematography:
Bruno DelbonnelCast:
Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Adam Driver, F. Murray Abraham, Max Casella, Ethan Phillips, Robin Bartlett (more)Plots(1)
It is 1961 and aspiring young folk singer, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is at a crossroads. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles - some of them of his own making. Living at the mercy of both friends and strangers, scaring up what work he can find, Llewyn's misadventures take him from the basket houses of Greenwich Village to an empty Chicago club - on an odyssey to audition for a music mogul - and back again. Brimming with music performed by Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan as Llewyn's married Village friends, as well as Marcus Mumford and Punch Brothers, Inside Llewyn Davis - in the tradition of O Brother, Where Art Thou? - is infused with the transportive sound of another time and place. An epic on an intimate scale, it represents the Coen Brothers' fourth collaboration with producer T Bone Burnet. (Roadshow Entertainment)
(more)Videos (34)
Reviews (10)
Llewyn and I missed each other - not completely, but we just walked along the same sidewalk, and he talked and sang and I understood him, in every ironic gloss of his miserable self-centered life. Finally, he stopped, disappeared into a side alley, and then cried out that he didn't give a damn, that it suited him and he'd stay stuck there while I went on.
()
The Coen brothers in chill-out mode. This not very ambitious but pleasantly relaxing underground flick has no plot, but its atmosphere is excellent in places – especially during the brilliantly edited (including great work with sounds) car journey to Chicago, dominated by the film’s best character (played by John Goodman). As a whole, however, the film is unsatisfactory, it does not give the audience what it is waiting for. Factotum, also a story about an underdog/loser, was formally more conventional, but with more entertaining content.
()
A movie that, in my eyes, makes up for the fact that it talks about unpleasant life situations in an all-too-pleasant way. The steady pace of the episodic narrative is this time not disrupted (in a positive sense) by any exceptional supporting character or any charming filmmaking idea by which the Coens dissect the superficiality and get down to their typical atmospheric poeticism. Isaac is fine and the music is nice, though it will be appreciated mostly by folk enthusiasts older than 80 or so :) 70%
()
Even though the Coens still have their own poetic style, even though this film has absolutely fantastic music, it is not something I would consider exceptional. The Coens delve into their absurd drama about a singer, we follow his fate, his "success" during one week, but to make the impression stronger, just like him, we also do not find a resolution. Unfortunately, this is not a film that would enchant me, no matter how well-made it may be.
()
At certain moments, the uncomfortably familiar feeling of being lost, weary, and lonely during the grayest American winter in many years. It could perhaps be argued that the muted colors go a little too far in the overall bleakness of the film, but to its credit it is constant in its mood throughout and doesn't really offer any way out that would otherwise kind of belie itself. A surreal journey of several days to Chicago, where time stretches out into a seemingly endless black mass from which there is no escape, as all around is a frost-covered wasteland bordered by cones of car lights, is the Coen brothers' darkest period. "I'm tired. I thought I just needed a night's sleep but it's more than that."
()
Ads