Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Promotional still supplied through the Festival de Cannes film gallery.
Llewyn Davis has made it to Chicago with his guitar. Bud Grossman sits across from him in an almost empty club and asks him to play. Oscar Isaac performs The Death of Queen Jane with such concentration that the room briefly seems to belong to the song. Then the performance ends, and Grossman has to decide whether there is a career he can sell.
Inside Llewyn Davis lets us hear enough of the music to take Llewyn seriously. That matters when his behaviour makes him difficult to like. He borrows space in other people's homes, mishandles their trust and turns conversations into arguments. His ability is evident. Living with him is another matter, and the Coen brothers keep both experiences in the same film.
The story follows a week in the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Llewyn is trying to work as a solo performer after losing his musical partner. Other people seem able to turn a performance into a connection, a job or a place to sleep. He can make a song feel private and immediate, then struggle with what happens when somebody answers him.
Grossman's response in Chicago is painfully practical. The song has not persuaded him that he can make money with Llewyn as a solo act. There is no long argument about whether the performance was good. Llewyn has travelled all that way to discover that the question being asked of him is different from the one he thought he was answering.
Joel and Ethan Coen's film won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2013. Oscar Isaac leads a cast that includes Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake and F. Murray Abraham as Grossman. The film's public recognition can make Llewyn's predicament feel even harsher. We are watching the care that went into a performance about a man who cannot get the right person to care. When he plays again, the possibility of being heard is still there. So is the need to find somewhere to spend the night.
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