You’ll love or hate Inside Llewyn Davis

It’s always cause for celebration when the Coen Brothers release a new movie. Whether that anticipation or celebration was warranted once the movie is out is almost always in the eye of the beholder. The Coens can veer from cult classic to box office hit from film to film – from Blood Simple to Raising Arizona, Barton Fink to Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou to No Country for Old Men – the list is impressive, even with their “failures” like The Man Who Wasn’t There and The Hudsucker Proxy (which I think are both criminally under-rated).

Their latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, was met with a lot of anticipation but severely divided the Coen devoted. I’ve seen high praise and downright disdain for the film, and with the Academy of Motin Picture Arts and Sciences passing the film over in all of the major categories (save for cinematography and sound mixing), I knew it was time to take a look at the film now that it’s available on home video.

Inside Llewyn Davis takes place in New York’s Greenwich Village area, circa 1961, a kind of hazy era for the folk music scene just before Dylan. Davis (Oscar Isaac) is one half of a defunct duo – his partner committed suicide – who is trying to make it in the industry as a solo act, playing underground clubs and dealing with a shady agent who doesn’t seem to have Llewyn’s career as a top priority. Llewyn spends his nights couch-hopping and his days alienating everyone around him with his lack of passion for what he’s trying to do. Or is he just misunderstood? It’s really hard to tell.

Isaac plays Davis as a sleepy-eyed drifter, going from one friend’s place to the next for the night, never seeming to take responsibility for his existence. The only time he tries to be responsible is only after he’s been irresponsible by getting someone pregnant. He basically has an account with the doctor who performs abortions. His latest mistake is with the wife (Carey Mulligan) of his friend Jim (Justin Timberlake), and she has no clue if the baby is Jim’s or Llewyn’s so she has no choice but to get rid of it, even though she desperately wants children.

Like Llewyn, Mulligan’s character Jean, is just a morose person but topped off with a huge amount of misplaced anger. Every time she confronts Llewyn about the baby, it’s always HIS fault that she’s in this situation. She never once takes responsibility for her own actions (and Llewyn apparently isn’t the only other guy she’s slept with as we learn later in the movie). Even when she goes out of her way to help Llewyn get a gig because she actually believes in him more than he does in himself, she’s just been so unpleasant up to that point that it’s hard to swallow that she would even do that for him.

Llewyn leaves New York and the movie then becomes a road trip where he encounters a jazz musician he hitches a ride with on the way to Chicago (and it’s never clear if he set up the ride or just happened to hop in this guy’s car) which becomes a rather pointless exercise for John Goodman to try to inject some laughs into this supposed comedy film. He does have a few good lines, but then he’s gone and you’re left wondering what that was all about.

In fact, that’s the feeling you’re left with by the end of the film, which confusingly seems to loop back on itself, but then you realize the entire thing was a flashback and we’re still left wondering just how deeply we really did get into Llewyn Davis’ psyche by the time the credits roll. As a fan of the Coen Brothers, I just found Inside Llewyn Davis to be a film that holds the viewer at arms length, never really letting you get to know any of the characters because they’re all so depressed or angry. Timberlake’s Jim seems to be fairly happy and well-adjusted (because he doesn’t know his wife is a slut), but he’s barely in the movie long enough to bring that joy he has to lighten things up.

On the plus side, the film does show why it got the two Oscar nominations it did. The cinematography is a gorgeously muted grey/green, giving us a time and place where the sun never seems to shine … which could explain why everyone is so depressed all the time. The new Blu-ray accurately represents the intent of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who wanted scenes to fall back into darkness. The colors are subdued and the blacks are very deep in those shadowy scenes, so while it may not be reference quality, it still looks lovely (and it’s interesting to compare the colorful, raw footage seen in the featurette with the color-graded footage of the film). The 5.1 DTS-HD Master audio also puts the musical performances – recorded live on set – front and center but doesn’t get too much of a workout, save for some background ambient sound, during the rest of the film. The star is the music, and the track represents it very well indeed.

The Blu-ray’s only bonus is a 42-minute featurette, Inside Inside Llewyn Davis, that takes us behind the scenes looking more at the pre-production period of the film’s music more than anything else. We get a little insight into the characters, but the music and the era the Coen’s wanted to portray are the stars here. It’s a surprisingly “bare bones” disk, but the lack of significant extras gives the film more room to breathe in the video and audio presentation.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a hard film to enjoy. Isaac does give a terrific performance in the end even if you hate the character, and his vocals are probably the best part of the movie. In fact, even if you’re not into the folk music scene, the music (overseen by regular Coen collaborator T. Bone Burnett and Marcus Mumford) is captivating and really ends up being the film’s main selling point. Without that, it would be one long slog through the lives of some really unlikable people.

Inside Llewyn Davis on Blu-ray was provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for the purpose of this review.