Inside Llewyn Davis

Folk musician Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has little success, no apartment, but all kinds of problems as he works towards his big breakthrough in the winter of 1961. In the evenings, the thirty-something tours the small clubs of New York's Greenwich Village and the apartments of acquaintances. He has impregnated the wife (Carey Mulligan) of his best friend (Justin Timberlake), his new solo record is lying on the shelves like lead and he has the orphaned cat of a couple he knows in tow. Sometimes Llewyn is mocked on stage, sometimes ignored, once even beaten up. And the road trip to Chicago with an overweight jazz musician (John Goodman) is also for the cat (who is not called Ulysses in the movie for nothing). Llewyn Davis loves the music, but the music doesn't love him back. And so the Coen brothers tell the story of all the thousands of faces that have never been shone upon by the great spotlight of music history. It is the meagre bohemian life of a not particularly likeable, vain man, told here in black and white and with much loving meticulousness. The music, the main theme of the film, is given the same reverence as Llewyn himself - but with much more success. What a beautiful atmospheric picture "the Coens" have created here by grouping everything around a true loser... and winning all along the line!