Inside Llewyn Davis (15)

The Coen's latest unmissable gift to the world is in cinemas tomorrow (Friday 24th Jan).

Inside Llewyn Davis (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Riding high on the success of their biggest commercial hit to date (True Grit), Inside Llewyn Davis is a change of tack for the Coen brothers and one of their most curious, slight and inaccessible films to date.  Following a struggling folk musician as he misses golden opportunities, chases wild geese (metaphorically) and a cat (literally), this is the story of a diamond in the rough who just can’t catch a break.  It’s very Coen-esque that this should be their next project, especially as Ethan Coen has said, “Maybe Llewyn Davis doesn’t compromise because nobody’s offering him enough money.  It’s similar to our situation.”  It’s as though they’ve shied away from success to avoid the temptation to commercialise.

The year is 1961, and Davis’ character is largely modelled on the man who Bob Dylan called his ‘first New York muse’, Dave Van Ronk.  Ronk never made it big and remained largely obscure.  For Davis, his stagnant career is largely down to his own jaded attitude towards failure.  He assumes things won’t work out, doesn’t recognise potential leads and cares more about his friend’s escaped feline than the people in his life.  After friend and fellow singer Jean (an hilariously sweary Carey Mulligan) rants at him for getting her pregnant, all he can say is he’s worried about the cat!  If he put as much effort into relationships, professional and personal, as he does into chasing the cat, then maybe he’d get somewhere.  Instead he’s dismissive and preoccupied, tortured by an inner turmoil which the Coen’s choose not to explain until half way through.

Oscar Isaac is the title character.  It’s impossible to picture anyone else filling Llewyn’s shoes; he’s the perfect blend of grizzled po-faced confusion, not to mention musical, and makes it possible to sympathise with a character who could have been very unlikable.  Any fears that pop star Justin Timberlake would mar the quality of the ensemble cast are unfounded; he plays his part as nice guy musician Jim to a tee.  He cleverly portrays how his character doesn’t realise the extent to which Llewyn feels threatened by him, and also performs one of the film’s best songs in a sequence that lets the Coens soar in their love of music and quirky madness.  It’s a non-introspective and infectiously upbeat number, which Davis makes no bones about scorning.

Regular Coen collaborator John Goodman makes a brief appearance as an insensitive handicapped codger, who manages to get under Llewyn’s skin and look deeper inside him during an extended sequence where they share a car to Chicago.  Indeed the performances are uniformly impressive, and often underplayed, giving much of the Coen’s zany, bitter dialogue a melancholy feel unprecedented in their famously offbeat filmography.  Even the cat is brilliant; apparently the Coen’s directing talents aren’t limited to working with humans!

Bruno Delbonnel more than deserves his Oscar nomination for the cinematography, with the distinct colour palette and nostalgic glow striking an alluringly atmospheric chord.  The recreation of the period is vivid yet distant, making a bygone time seem lost to history but still strangely palpable.

The soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett in his third time working with the brothers, is another gem from left field that will leave you with catchy melodies, from the lively to the wistful, echoing in your mind for weeks to come.  Van Ronk’s underground classics are blended with some terrific original songs, giving the soundscape special character.

The story is structured episodically, and each scene is filled with such resonance and poignancy that you almost expect it to be over with a cut to black at any second.  Instead, the Coen’s tie things up with a thematic tidiness and mysterious elegance, bookending Llewyn’s adventures in a way that will haunt audiences and linger long after the lights come up.

Inside Llewyn Davis is both an ode to and warning for starving artists addicted to the pseudo-romance of their loser lifestyles.  Sweet and stinging, the Coens are the kings of success without compromise, and have the authority to dare and make such complex and sweeping observations on the creative types they simultaneously identify with and rise above.

Bob Dylan with Dave Van Ronk (right).

No Country for Old Men (2007) - 20/01/08 - *****

Review of the Film No Country for Old Men (2007) (15).

Advanced warning: this review contains some plot spoilers.

It is generally thought that the Coen brothers quality of work has seen a significant dip in recent years. Well, if that is true, that time is now over. No Country for Old Men, based on the book by Cormac McCarthy, is a one of a kind, truly transcendental piece of work. It is nothing like any other film that it is possible to see at the cinema nowadays, with characters, ideas and a story structure that would surely (and apparently is…) confusing the living daylights out of most average multiplex attendees. The trick is to not see this film as a straight forward thriller… that is not what this film is at all. It is about ideas, themes, and philosophical questions as timeless and grandiose as chance, change… and inevitability. Now, even after doing some significant research after watching the film I do not in any way claim to myself understand exactly what No Country for Old Men is all about… what each character means and what each twist of fate in the plot points at; but I do claim to be one of the relatively few to have seen the film and realised that part of the point and intent of it, is to leave you with shreds of ideas and meaning, to encourage you to go off afterwards, think and research what it’s all about in your own time… and even to make you need (and want) to see the film again, far from only in a money grabbing sense.

The pacing and structure of the narrative are crucial elements in the telling of this tale and the portraying of the themes and ideas that the film makers wanted to get across and cause the viewer to dwell upon. On the whole, the film is actually quite slow moving, but the tension, created by careful editing and the order in which different plot elements are introduced and/or revealed, makes it feel a lot faster, in much the same way that fear and alertness can make even long drawn out situations in real life, fly past as though they were hardly even really happening. Now there’s another key, a good deal of the events depicted and even the characters in the story, are at certain points and moments indicated through dialogue or particular choices of camera angles, that perhaps they do not really exist in the reality of the film, in the sense of being actual physical beings… maybe they are just parallels and/or representations of the mental struggles that the other ‘real’ characters might be going through; or perhaps they represent something else entirely… The whole thing really hinges on one of the least seen characters in the film, that of an aging Sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones. To avoid giving too much away, I will just advise you to keep a careful eye on this character, and to ensure that whenever he is on screen and especially when he is speaking, that you pay particularly close attention to every scrap of information that the filmmakers are feeding you through the screen and speakers of the cinema that you are in, via this cornerstone character.

On to a less abstract analysis of the film now, the performances of all the actors involved are each floating comfortably somewhere above top notch level… The most obviously revelatory performance is given by Javier Bardem as the films most compelling character, a totally inhuman, incurably evil killer. To highlight a moment that I think is important relating to what we can learn about this character, I just want to point out his response to another character who says at one point that he can go to hell: “Okay.” The film’s advertising campaign really milks the publics lust for cold hearted brutality and murder by constantly showing Bardem’s character and his actions and not much else to sell the film by; it is probably best for this reason that if you are able to you avoid seeing and/or taking too much note of the content of the trailers and T.V. spots for the film, as they will give you the wrong impression of what the story concentrates on, and will warp your expectations for the worse. As I have said before, Tommy Lee Jones’ character is very much the key to what the film is all about, and he gives one of the best performances of his career by portraying the character with all the delicacy and thoughtfulness that was required in order for the Coen brothers to really pull off their vision for the film. Josh Brolin is also perfect in the lead role as a hunter who finds himself having bitten off more than he can chew, in a highly volatile situation… The only options that the character seems have are to either spit ‘it’ out before it’s too late, or choke on ‘it‘. …And, perhaps because of greed, apparently favourable chance and/or sudden ambition, he doesn’t want to just spit it out.

The soundtrack is a very unusual one, overall the film is coated in silence… a silence which slowly but surely oozes out of the screen and wraps itself around you, until it is broken by various bouts of the constantly threatened, impending violence… and the danger and edginess that the film has cast upon your psyche is paid off. Yes, I am talking about atmosphere, something which is disappointingly not to be found in very many films these days. By contributing to No Country for Old Men’s gripping atmosphere, the soundtrack by Carter Burwell succeeds beautifully, although very little actual ‘music’ is ever heard.

In conclusion, and to risk putting things more (or too) simply, No Country for Old Men is to me about an aging Texas Sheriff, coming to realise that one cannot always keep up with changing times, that the only thing that anybody can be sure of is their own eventual deaths… and that fear and uncertainty of what comes after death, along with the near impossible challenge of accepting that inevitable event, are seemingly universal in their pressing on human kind. But, the film is complex and about many things, and I suspect that it perhaps will not be possible to ever say what all those things are… but it does get your mind hooked on some intriguing and fundamentally important facts, thoughts… and musings. The Coens have reached back in time, past their recent dwindling efforts, past even their finest hour which is the real marvel of a film, Fargo, back to their very first film, Blood Simple. There is no other film in the Coen brother’s filmography that No Country for Old Men is more like… and so may this be a new beginning for them which will trigger another long string of terrific, quality films just like the one that followed their cinematic debut, and better even! Now that would be marvelous.

If, once you’ve seen the film, you disagree with me as to what exactly it is about… so be it. But! If you disagree with me as to the quality and essentiality of it, then may you be barred from ever entering a cinema again for committing such an indefensibly heinous intellectual crime! So, go and see the film. Then if you have seen what I have seen… go and see it again.

Rating : *****

Written by,

.Peter.D.Marsay.

Originally completed: 20/01/08.