NYFF: The Coen Bros Talk ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

To explain the viewing experience of the Coen Bros. Inside Llewyn Davis is akin to looking at Bob Dylan’s “Freewheelin'” cover. It calls back to a reminiscent time, where feelings could live in both worlds of the dreary haze and timeless carefree attitude that places both Dylan and Suze Rotolo as they walk with arms hooked.

Whether one lived in the 60s or not, Inside Llewyn Davis transports the viewer to that time in pristine atmospheric detail that brings an intimate setting to the lives playing out on-screen. From the first frame the viewer feels like they have spent a lifetime with its title character, Llewyn Davis. Davis, a down on his luck folk singer, exists as his deceased partner’s other half that no one ever really paid attention to. The characters that orbit his world are characterized to a T. There’s Carey Mulligan, who takes on the role of Jean, a shrewd fling of Llewyn’s who just so happens to be married to a green folk singer, Jim, played by Justin Timberlake.

That said, the star of the film is Oscar Isaac, whose portrayal of Llewyn Davis steals the show. Going back to fleshing out the anti-hero Ethan and Joel Coen present Llewyn Davis as the film’s punching bag. For most of the film it’s a matter of watching a self-destructive man circle the drain without realizing that he’s his own worst enemy. At times it’s extremely easy to hate a character that blames his failures on everyone else.

Though it’s because of that same dreary specificity that the Coen Bros allow us to also feel sympathy for Llewyn. Davis makes a sport out of failing, moving borough to borough, couch to couch, as he inwardly performs solid tracks in dive bars. Interestingly enough, there’s a deep sense that Davis has no longer chosen his profession, but instead is stuck in this world that used to be his greatest love. At the heart it’s about suffering through rejection, and seeing what you make of your time, which makes this crushing story an all too real tale and at times, a humorous experience.

The Inquisitr’s Niki Cruz was on hand at the New York Film Festival to take part in a discussion with Writer/Director team Joel and Ethan Coen about their poetic folk film Inside Llewyn Davis.

******

Choosing the songs in Inside Llewyn Davis

Ethan Coen: A couple of the songs were specified in the script as we were writing it; certainly not most of them. T-Bone was the first person we sent the script to when we finished it, so that conversation just started as soon as we were done with the script.

On failure and zeroing in on the anti-hero

Joel Coen: The success movies have been done, haven’t they? It’s less interesting from a story point of view. In fact, I don’t even know how we would even start to think about that one.

Ethan Coen: It just comes up with conversation as far as picking a subject. It’s not that specific. It’s a very, very, very vague conversation that gets progressively more concrete.

The cultural movement of folk music and shying away from Bob Dylan

Joel Coen: That’s a big subject for folk music. The cultural moment was specifically on our mind when we were thinking about the story because we wanted to do something that was set in the scene before Dylan showed up, specifically. We weren’t that interested in that period, because he came out of that scene and changed it. People know more about that and it seemed less interesting to us. There were people obviously writing songs and singing them before Bob Dylan showed up. The era of the singer-songwriter was happening right around there in terms of interpreters of traditional folk music. Dylan was the catalyst of that, and there was an obsession with authenticity and the people involved in the early folk revival were very concerned about this. It’s a big subject.

Creating the atmosphere for Inside Llewyn Davis

Ethan Coen: Spring came really early, so we were fighting to keep the bleakness. In some of the shots, you can see blooming trees where there shouldn’t be. Thinking about the folk scene, you think about New York in the winter, and you don’t want to see it in the summer when it’s green.

Early ideas of shooting in black & white, and shooting in digital

Joel Coen: We were sitting down and trying to figure out all of those things. As we started to break the script down into specific shots we realized that so much of what we wanted to do, from a shot point of view didn’t lend itself to black and white. This movie was shot on film for a number of reasons. I’m glad we shot on film, but it’s a hybrid thing right now. It all goes into a computer and it’s all heavily manipulated. But still, there’s something that looks different. It’s probable that the next one will be shot digitally.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS hits theaters nationwide on December 20.

[Image Credit: Nobuhiro Hosoki]