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Review: ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ is a Near Perfect Portrayal of Depression
The Coen brothers bleakly comedic view of a ’60s folk singer is deeply impactful
Given the versatility and dizzying heights of quality found in the very best films directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, it is extremely difficult to say which of their many works is ‘the best’. It’s a Sisyphusian task, a waste of time, an endless shifting back and forth between a number of titles. And while there are both wrong answers — The Ladykillers, most certainly, is not the best Coen brother production to say the least — and there are right answers, too — No Country for Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo and more are absolutely wonderful. But among those frequently mentioned as Coen Brother classics, it is baffling that Inside Llewyn Davis rarely comes up.
The film follows the titular Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a struggling folk singer in 1960s New York, through a series of tumultuous personal moments all set across one week. Utilising an episodic style, along with a series of other unconventional methods, rather than a traditional narrative structure of having a character move from A to B and actually progress towards a goal, Inside Llewyn Davis brilliantly exploits the Coen brothers’ usually off-beat sense of…
