"Inside Llewyn Davis", Cruel Folk

Inside Llewyn Davis

Let's rejoice for a second! The Coen Brothers are back! It's been a long walk through the desert (since 1998 maybe?), and I admit I seriously believed they were gone, at least for me, but here's hope: it's called "Inside Llewyn Davis".

It's a very peculiar, uneasy film, surprisingly cruel and hopeless. Character studies are not new for the Coen Brothers. On the contrary, one can say almost the majority of their films have been very personal trips inside the minds and behaviour of (peculiar?) people. But maybe this is the first time the main character can't live in the real world. Sure, you might be saying out loud, whaaaat? The Coen Brothers have been always dealing with characters willing to live on a surreal, parallel planet where they can be happy, or at least pretend to be. But I'm not referring to that. Llewyn Davis is his most realistic creation, but he's unable to connect with life. Real life. He prefers to keep sabotaging himself.

Llewyn doesn't have any redeeming quality, and throughout the film we follow him on a downward spiral of self-destruction. He's hurt by his past (a past that keeps coming into the conversation but we never see), but foremost he's selfish, irresponsible, unsympathetic, judgmental. He brings misery to himself and the ones surrounding him. And what's worse, he seems to revel in it. The viewer won't have many chances to connect with him. Maybe that's why the directors gave him a cat as his sole companion. A silent, solipsist animal might be the only one who can be with him. They fit.

The contrast between the folk music he plays, where the singer is alone against the public, with a guitar, words as the only arguments is so striking. Folk needs an artist the public can relate to, but Llewyn simply can't. Therefore his career is fated to failure. And failing is what he seem doing, once and again. Doors look open at times, possibility looks plausible in a couple of situations. But he is always his worst enemy.

Dark and tough is also the Greenwich Village the Coen Brothers portray. Glimpses of a community are there, but far from the "peace and love and understanding" tunes we have the image of. But our character can't blame anyone else but himself. Friends like Jean (played by Carey Mulligan in the best role I have seen of her, and with whom he shares more than a secret) and Jim (Justin Timberlake) lend hands, while the Gorfeins (what an incredible scene, so powerful) offer their shelter, but Llewyn ruins it. Secondary roles like musicians Al Cody of Troy Nelson offer a harsh comparison with our starring, where he shows his vanity (some would say his foolishness thinking he is better than the rest, that he deserves to be known), while John Goodman as the eccentric Roland Turner serves well the purpose of bringing some punchy funny lines before making Davis look like the most frustrated (and frustrating) person on Earth.

Actors are excellent, with Oscar Isaac carrying an astonishing weight of the film with his dislocated, gloomy, defeated faces. He is despair, abandon. He is cruel folk (that Duluth singer appearing at the very end is a terrible, glacial joke). A powerful performance being the key of a tight script that leaves the viewer intrigued, going back to this "week in the life" of this condemned young musician looking for answers, details and crucial scenes. An enduring film. Welcome back Ethan and Joel.

SCORE: 7,5/10

"Greenwich Village", Generation Folk

Greenwich Village: Music that Defined a Generation
Beefeater In-Edit 2013, Chapter II

Very few places have the mythical qualities of Greenwich Village. The Beats, CBGBs, Dylan, Woody Allen... Literature, music, cinema... these streets are sacred ground for me. I've been lucky to wander around the area, and despite the hipster-posh-pricey-style, full of Starbucks (that's heresy!) and organic stores, the neighborhood still has a special vibe. So watching this film at In-Edit Festival was an obvious choice.

As its perhaps too evident full title announces, "Greenwich Village" aims to be an in-depth take of what it meant to be there on the 60s-early 70s, and how the music scene fuelled, or at least was an intrinsic part of the political, social and cultural changes of American society. Director's Laura Archibald approach is a coral one, full of interviews mixed with some striking performance clips, which, on paper, makes absolute sense. After all, the Greenwich Village in the 60s was a collective, a community that became the voice for many. Right?

That's the question. And I'm afraid it remains unanswered after watching the documentary. Don't get me wrong, the film is excellently structured (the comic animations are pretty cool too) and the division in several "chapters" gives cohesion to the different remarks of the artists interviewed. But it is not as revelatory as it could haven been, in my opinion because the quick interventions from the speakers are so short the whole majority of them are just flashy or superficial statements that makes you think there's a bit of indulgence and self-importance. Won't add a lot to the ones who, like me, are already "converted" to the cause. But I don't want to criticise the film, as I believe it's a fantastic work, that can really grab the attention of the casual spectator or only big-names folk/protest songs fans, showing a glimpse of a simpler but probably more human way of understanding life, and a sense of commitment and unity that would be very much welcomed and needed today.

And it does has many points of interest and remarkable situations. Archibald goes way beyond Dylan (maybe the weakest chapter, despite Jose Feliciano's hilarious impersonation), and shows many others artists, rather unknown, doing justice/paying an unexpected tribute to a few of them. She also features some mesmerizing performances by the likes of Phil Ochs, Odette, Richie Havens or Joni Mitchell. And she's not shy to bring (although I would have loved a richer insight) a not-so-happy issue to the table: the blacklisting and persecution from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the perennially ridiculous fear of Communism.      

Finally, and it's such a big plus it deserves a separate comment: it does have PETE SEEGER (yeah, in big capital letters). Every remark he offers in the film is full of wisdom and joyous eloquence (don't miss the final credits where he reveals what happened on the über-famous Newport Folk Festival where Dylan "turned electric"), and brought me near tears a couple of times.“What in the world is an un-American activity?” Not singing songs about people, that's for sure...  

SCORE: 6,75/10