Greenwich Village, 1 9 6 0s. Llewyn Davis is a talented folk musician, but nobody wants to hire him. His partner committed suicide, his manager has no gigs for him. Homeless, Llewyn sleeps over at the apartments of his friends, carrying only his guitar. His fling Jean tells him she is pregnant, and that he needs to pay for the abortion since she doesn't want to carry his child. Llewyn locks himself out of the apartment of a friend and unwillingly takes their cat with him on his trip to Chicago, with two other musicians, Johnny Five and Roland Turner. Llewyn sings in front of a manager there, but he rejects him. Back in New York, Llewyn decides to apply to be a sailor, but his sister threw away his license. Outside of a night club, he is beaten up by a man for making insulting remarks at his wife performing on stage.
Joel and Ethan Coen's 16th feature length film, "Inside Llewyn Davis" is a tragic and depressive contemplation on the bleak situation where a struggling artist is actually good, but still has no success. Through their cynical-sardonic approach, the Coens both show the title protagonist as a lost hero and the society as an uncaring, cold and indifferent system. One of the best sequences is the one where Llewyn goes for an open audition in front of a music manager (F. Murray Abraham), gives it his best and actually performs a really good, heartfelt folk song, but at the end, the manager just says: "I don't see much money in here". The message is clear: you don't just need talent, you also need capitalistic appeal to make it. It may be that the Coens sympathize with Llewyn as they themselves emerged from independent cinema and at first didn't attract a huge audience, despite critical acclaim of their films. The movie is too episodic and overstretched, without that tight sharpness from the Coens' best days, but some of their writing still yields great, sizzling dialogues, for instance when Jean is angry at Llewyn ("You are like king Midas' idiot brother!") or when Llewyn applies for a job of a sailor, and the official asks him: "Hey, you're not Huey Davis' kid, are you?", upon which a sarcastic Llewyn responds with: "Why not?!" The cat gives an emotional anchor to the meandering story where characters just come and go after five minutes, since the animal is a symbol for Llewyn himself in the scene where he accidentally hits it with his car.
Grade:++
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