Film Review: "Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013).

From Academy Award winning filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen comes Inside Llewyn Davis. This musical comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by the Coen Brothers. The film follows a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles—some of them of his own making.

Set in 1961, the film was inspired by the cultural disconnection within a New York–based music scene, where the songs seemed to come from all parts of the United States except New York, but whose performers included Brooklyn-born Dave Van Ronk and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Well before writing the script, the Coens began with a single idea, of Van Ronk being beaten up outside of Gerde's Folk City in the Village. The filmmakers employed the image in the opening scenes, then periodically returned to the project over the next couple of years to expand the story using a fictional character. One source for the film was Van Ronk's posthumously published (2005) memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. According to the book's co-author, Elijah Wald, the Coens mined the work "for local color and a few scenes". The character is a composite of Van Ronk, Elliot, and other performers from the New York boroughs who performed in the Village at that time. Van Ronk's music served as a starting point for the Coens as they wrote the script, and many of the songs first designated for the film were those he had recorded. By mid February 2012, Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Adam Driver, F. Murray Abraham, and Garrett Hedlund were cast. Casey Affleck, Scott Avett, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Reynolds and Conor Oberst auditioned for the role of Llewyn Davis. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in late April. Filming took place throughout New York and Minnesota. Shooting was complicated by an early New York spring, which interfered with the bleak winter atmosphere that prevails throughout the film, and by the difficulty of filming several cats, who, unlike dogs, ignore the desires of filmmakers. Isaac, Timberlake, Mulligan, Driver and others performed the music live.

The film stars Isaac, Mulligan, Goodman, Timberlake, Driver, Murray Abraham, and Hedlund. The performances gave the film its tongue-in-cheek humor effortlessly, and added poignancy to the drama and the period musical pieces throughout.

Though not as good as Coen brothers' classics such as Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and No Country for Old Men, the delightfully loopy Inside Llewyn Davis is still a lot of fun. Great dialogue, superb 'Scope camerawork from Bruno Delbonnel, and a genuinely wondrous deus ex machina are among the delights. After making what are still probably their two best features, the Coen brothers came up with one of their best, a piece of indie entertainment.

Simon says Inside Llewyn Davis receives: