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Very interesting movie. People seeing this movie have to pay closeQuote:
Originally Posted by red-cyberman
attentions to clues that give hints to what's going on both during the movie (the maze painting) and at the very end. (the whistle in the hole)
There is a telling scene mid-way through ”Inside Llewyn Davis”, the new Coen Brothers movie, when a music manager called Bud Grossman, played by F. Murray Abraham (and clearly modelled on Bob Dylan’s erstwhile manager Al Grossman) listens to an impassioned musical performance by the central character and responds that” I don’t hear much money in it.”
It signals a time of transformation – when the largely coffee house based folk music tradition of the late fifties and early sixties travelled into the mainstream of popular music via such figures as Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
Llewyn Davies is not modelled on one of these luminaries, but on the also-rans such as Rambling jack Elliott or Dave Van Ronk (the Coens admit they based his character on Van Ronk’s autobiography).
Llewyn Davis is a nearly man of spiky personality – who plays the clubs of Greenwich villages and crashes at the apartments of friends as he ploughs (into the ground) a musical career in the aftermath of the successful time in a duo (following the suicide of his partner).
The Coens, like Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino, are darlings of the film industry and many can do no wrong – even when they producer stinkers like “Burn After Reading’ or ”A Serious Man.”
Yet they are capable of greatness with films such as “Fargo”, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” or “No Country For Old Men” and they do deserve praise for consistently trying out different genres – like last year’s enjoyable re-make of “True Grit”
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is one of their better films and is already picking up accolades in the US. It is really going to be liked by those who love the music of this era (currently enjoying quite a present revival of interest – check out the wonderful new CD set “ Live At Caffe Lena” - which was actually not in The Village but in Saratoga Springs.)
But while it has bittersweet comedy – particularly in the character played splendidly by John Goodman, a fat drug-addled old jazz musician – and a wonderful thread about cats – it is also run through with the Coen’s now familiar misanthropic view of the human condition.
The central character played by Oscar Isaac, is a great performer – but more in the Dave Van Ronk mode than a Dylan (a brief evocation of Dylan towards the end of the fm underscores the coming marginalisation of singers like Davis) and as Grossman judges, he is not likely to make much money.
And he is uncompromising. He clashes with his sister, with his friends and with just about everyone else.
He refuses the offer to trim his wild beard to a goatee and join a trio Bud Grossman is assembling – unnamed – but summoning the spectre of the commercialism of Peter, Paul and Mary.
In summation, a most enjoyable film evoking a now largely forgotten era of musical history. Oh and the music is god - including a hugely surprising performance by Justin Timberlake.
Inside Llewyn Davis - Please Mr. Kennedy - YouTube
G.I Joe
A Clockwork Orange[1971]...(This movie's about a week older than I am!)
Bit o' the ole Ultra Violence my little Droogies...
Surely the problem with the Coen Brothers is that even when they try out 'different genres' their films all look and sound the same, and are characterised by a cynical violence which acts as a replacement for plot or story -when in doubt, shoot it out. The question might be, How accurate is their portrayal of the contemporary USA? How many Black or Latino characters have their been in their films other than the small roles in the The Ladykillers, the camp idiot (John Turturro, Italian-American by origin and a wonderful actor) or the 'angry Black man' in The Big Lebowski? Not impressed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
That's part of the problem...Hollywood(WAY "Too Big To Fail")....These things are cyclical(Think about it, when I was little, the so-called "Renegades" were Spielberg, Scorsese, & Lucas)... The Hollywood system is set in it's ways, making particular genres of films for decades: Westerns, war flicks, slapsticks, Biblical epics, action flicks, etc...Then a bunch of new hotshot come along and shake up the game with their post film school project...They're either welcomed into the machine/community/tribe(by which they exemplify their loyalty by churning out MORE studio-dreck for mass consumption--@ higher $$$budgets) or they're pushed to the "boonies" of the indie-foreign niche..Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Stavros, you'll have gathered I'm not that impressed either with the bulk of their work, but there is just one very brief fight in this new film - a little bit of fisticuffs in an alleyway - and precious little violence that I can recall in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou."
And while i hated "No Country For Old men" for the very violence you deplore it was a powerful piece of film making.
Indeed I have a book called The Movie Brats, about that group of new kids on the block (Scorsese, Milius, Lucas, de Palma) who have since morphed into respectability, as indeed did most of the Nouvelle Vague in France (although most of their films are not worth seeing except a couple by Rivette I suppose).Quote:
Originally Posted by goatman
Which Rivette Stavros? The only I have seen was "Celine and Julie go Boating'. First time i loved it but 20 years later it seemed rather tedious.
Well I obviously haven't seen the latest so my earlier comment doesn't apply, and I don't think there was any violence in The Hudsucker Proxy thinking back on that anaemic diversion. I think also that most music in the 1950s and 1960s was local and that reputations were made by word of mouth before the record industry, tv and radio brought local acts to national and then international fame. I doubt von Ronk would ever have made it and feel Dylan in his biography was often paying off a personal debt to obscure people rather than promoting someone for artistic reasons. He is not infallible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
Not pertinent to the thread, but isn't Dylan one of the few musicians who does not owe a debt to the Black American route which began with field hollers and slave songs, and morphed through the blues and Jazz into r&b and Soul? Do the Coen Brothers, like Woody Allen, have a blind spot when it comes to non-white/Black America? Believe it or not, I actually thought Burn after Reading was one of the most bearable of their jaded parables.