The writing/directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen can claim a considerable number of movies that pleased
both critics and audiences, not always an easy
achievement. Their work varies widely, films as different as an outrageous
comedy like “The Big Lebowski,” an eccentric crime
story like “Fargo,” or a dark, bloody thriller like “No Country for Old Men.”
Aside from a fondness for locating their work in a particular time and place,
possibly the major distinguishing mark in most of their films is a kind of
determined quirkiness, a consistent attraction toward the slightly offbeat and
askew.
That inclination, perhaps not so strangely, often leads to
one of the most annoying elements of the Coens’ work:
a tendency to mock their own subjects, to parody the forms they imitate, to
make fun of their characters. The technique allows them to take refuge in an
invulnerable position, hinting that whatever mistakes they make are
intentional, that they’re only having fun after all, a practice that protects
them from negative criticism.
In their latest movie, “Inside Llewyn
Davis,” which seems to be receiving the sort of critical praise usually
reserved for the great monuments of the cinema — films along the line of “Grand
Illusion” and “Citizen Kane” — that practice governs a good deal of the action
and influences much of the characterization. Even its protagonist, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), behaves like one of the hapless
targets of the Coens’ sometimes nasty mockery.
Announcing that the year is 1961, the picture opens and
closes with pretty much the same sequence of events, suggesting the brothers’
familiar protective self-parody. Llewyn Davis awakens
on a couch in a spacious New York apartment (belonging to someone else) and as
soon as he leaves, finds himself in the sort of broadly comic situation
featured in a hundred other movies — a cat slips out, the door slams, and he
finds himself locked out. Carrying his minimal luggage, a guitar, and the cat,
he begins a repetitive peregrination that pretty much sums up his hapless life
and sustains the plot of the movie.
Llewyn Davis is a folksinger at a
time when the form enjoyed a surprising popularity, trying to succeed in the
highly competitive environment of New York cafes and bars. He has made an album
with his former partner, who committed suicide for unexplained reasons. Llewyn now works on his own,
unable to pry royalties out of his recalcitrant agent, depending upon a hat
passed for his performances in an obscure Greenwich Village bar. With no place
to live, he exploits the grudging hospitality of his friends and colleagues,
chiefly a singing couple, a husband and wife team named Jim and Jean (Justin Timberlake
and Carey Mulligan).
In addition to the cat, a past relationship with Jean
complicates his situation and depletes his meager finances. Jean informs him
that she is pregnant, is unsure whether Jim or Llewyn
is responsible, and for some reason blames him for having sex with her. Llewyn must find some work, dig up the money for an
abortion, get the cat back to its owners, and somehow straighten out his life.
The movie
consequently shows the singer alternately performing, sponging off various
acquaintances, and in one long sequence, traveling to Chicago in hopes of a job
at the legendary Gate of Horn. The directionless plot, which moves episodically
as if it were being concocted on the fly, brings him in contact with other
musicians, none of them terribly talented or friendly, and, in a strange
sequence, a garrulous eccentric named Roland Turner (John Goodman at the top of
his game).
A passive actor playing a passive character, Oscar Isaac
appears in every scene, perhaps the only praiseworthy part of his performance. The
Coen brothers also present a most convincing glimpse
of a particular, identifiable time, one of their specialties; otherwise,
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is a dreary, depressing
portrait of a generally uninteresting person — a loser, as Jean calls him. And
after all the alternately whiny, nasal, falsetto lyrics about love and loss and
such matters and the repetitive music, I don’t think I really want to hear
another folk song for a long, long time.
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2014.
You just don’t get what it means to have high intellect. Not trying to be mean here but your assertion that the Coen’s are making fun of their subjects is so presumptive and off base as if to say I’m way smarter than they are so they should do things the way I want them done. You are a critic, did you like their movies? Why? Please don’t try to push your mental “illness” on the writer/directors. If a blind albino comedian uses self effacing humor would you judge him as being racist or somehow mean to the handicapped? What if a brilliant caricaturist does a self portrait? Would the result be self mocking just because the satire is self portrait? Just think about it, in the Coen’s world every personality trait is digested and portrayed, in often loving often mocking and usually both ways, Their stories often play on these traits and take them to logical ends of time and combination all in service of the viewers “entertainment”.