OVP: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Film: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham, Adam Driver
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound Mixing, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I follow the Coen Brothers almost everywhere, and as a result, I’ve been largely rewarded and occasionally burned.  While True Grit still remains a bit of a head-scratcher, for the most part this is a cinematic pair that I generally tend to love.

As a result of seeing so many of their movies, however, it’s getting harder and harder for them to surprise me.  I know the quirks that I’m about to encounter, the familiar off-beats and brilliant cinematography.  So I was somewhat surprised how much Inside Llewyn Davis, one of the near-missses in last year’s Best Picture race (that admittedly still scored two Oscar nominations) connected with me.  Days after I viewed it I found myself returning to its familiar tunes and lived-in characters, wondering why they had affected me so well.

The reality is, of course, that the film is very familiar to all of us who have seen a film about someone struggling with their own reality and the vision they had for their lives.  Llewyn Davis (Isaac, in a wonderfully felt performance) is not someone without talent.  Struggling to make it as a solo act after his singing partner committed suicide, Llewyn finds himself playing beautifully-felt folk music (most of the songs in the film are based on classics from the past, reinvented for the Coen Brothers) to audiences that are more attuned to other such things (this is 1961, after all).  Llewyn is forced to pay for the abortion of his ex-girlfriend Jean (Mulligan) and play with her current boyfriend’s (Timberlake) band in a ridiculously funny sequence (the song, “Please Mr. Kennedy,” gets much of its comic sensibility from the he’s-just-good-in-everything-lately Adam Driver, finding new facets for his quirky persona).  After that, armed with an orange cat (you always want your cats to be orange), he sets off on a road trip across the country with a beat poet Garrett Hedlund (who, like Driver, is great in basically everything these days) and a heroin-addled jazz musician John Goodman (it wouldn't be a Coen Brothers film without him), and slowly finds himself growing up, if not entirely giving up on his dream.

The film was wonderfully received by critics, and even those that didn't like it used words like "sad," "slow," and "grey," words that I latch onto like flypaper, so I can say most assuredly that I loved the movie.  I think what really stuck out to me most (aside from the music-so specific and crisp) was the effective work of lead actor Oscar Isaac.  The Juilliard-educated actor makes Llewyn so believable-I love the way that his hair always wants to pull distraction and the way his eyes roll.  This is someone who clearly has spent a considerable amount of time looking in the mirror, practicing for the big break that never seems to come.  I also love the level of exhaustion he seems to feel that the world hasn't caught up with his genius-there's something arbitrary about success, and the way that Llewyn doesn't quite get that at the beginning of the film and slowly has it dawn on him is really shrewd observation, and you wouldn't get there were it not for Isaac.

The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss for me.  For every excellent turn like F. Murray Abraham's dreamlike record producer or Garrett Hedlund's angsty Johnny Five, you get a performance that isn't quite there.  Carey Mulligan is a fine actress, but for some reason she's very hit-and-miss for me, and this wasn't a bullseye.  She plays Jean as too shrill, too conniving, and not nearly in-mesh with someone that we'd picture Llewyn falling in love with; this may be in small part the fault of the writers, but Mulligan doesn't help this by skipping out on what made her nuanced work in something like Shame or An Education so intoxicating.  Equally off-putting was Justin Timberlake's naive moron Jim, who is Jean's going-places lover.  While I liked that they made his stupid song a hit (again-the arbitrary nature of success), can we all just admit that Timberlake is not a good actor and call it a day?  I know that he has hilarious Saturday Night Live episodes and that he was in The Social Network and he's crazy sexy, but the reality is that parts in films made by David Fincher and the Coen Brothers should go to actors of actual promise.  Think of how much better Adam Driver would have been if he'd been promoted up to the Jim role or how an actor with the confidence of a Ryan Gosling could have handled Sean Parker, and tell me I'm wrong.

We'll be getting to those two Oscar nominations in short time (we should be finishing up the 2009 OVP in the next couple of weeks, and will be rolling right into 2013, which I'm almost done with).  However, in the meantime-what were everyone's thoughts on Inside Llewy Davis?  Did you agree that it was mostly hit and a little miss?  What are your thoughts on Justin Timberlake as an actor?  And where do you think it should have made it with Oscar?  Share in the comments!