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Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
I can’t believe it’s been a decade since this movie came out. It feels like it came out just a few years ago. It’s been on my watchlist forever. The reason I didn’t watch it back in 2013 is because it got so much hype that I didn’t think that the movie could meet my expectations. So i shelved it… till now.
At first glance this is probably the most Coen Brothers-esque movie, yet somehow the least Coen Brothers-esque movie ever made. I often say that the Coen’s like to make movies about people that don’t know what’s going on. (see Lebowski, Fargo, Burn After Reading, etc.) And in this film we have a character that knows what’s going on (his musical career is flaming out), but he doesn’t know what’s happening around him, as he surfs from couch to couch looking for a cat that may or may not have a scrotum.
Where this movie differs from the rest of the Coen’s filmography is that the stakes feel so low. Even in Barton Fink, where the main conflict was writer’s block, it felt like the whole world was about to burn down. For Llweyn Davis, his world seems muted. It’s almost like watching a indie drama from the early 2000s. Except this one has the Coen’s strange dark sense of humor.
Davis does what he’s suppose to do. Plays gigs. Makes an album, hitchhikes to Chicago to get the affirmation he thinks he deserves. But all he gets is F. Murray Abraham saying, “I see no money money here.” crushing words for a man that was looking for his last hope.
But I guess that’s the point of the movie. It’s about failure. Not that the Coen’s would know anything about that. I’m sure failure to them is a success by most people’s standards. But they do know good music and they know how to give us an emotional sucker punch, as in the last scenes we see Davis exit his go-to club and Bob Dylan take the stage. So close to success, only if he had a few more dollars and a few more friends.
I guess I should mention the soundtrack. It’s currently playing on my Spotify. It’s got some of that top tier folksy songs that I can dig. I was kinda shocked to see just how much music was in this movie. And that the Coen’s would let entire songs play out in one take.
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Column Friday 1/27/2023
This week I take a look at the new Arkansas made feature film, The Skull and the Arm:
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White Christmas (1954)
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…
So I can put on a minstrel show…
This is an odd Christmas movie because it doesn’t feel Christmasy. We start the movie off in the midst of World War 2, which was unexpected. Even more unexpected was that uniformed soldiers were putting on a show during the heat of combat. But I guess that sets the tone as I knew I had some disbelief to suspension. Then we forward 10 years and two former military men played by Crosby and Danny Kaye have become successful song and dance men. And they find themselves tangled up with two low level song and dance broads, played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. The foursome find their way to Vermont during a winter heat wave, where the white in White Christmas is gone.
The setup takes them to a failing inn ran by, coincidentally, their former general. So the foursome attempt to save the time with funny quips and mostly memorable songs and some whacky miscommunication, that could have easily been resolved if the characters would just talk to one another. There’s no Santa, there’s no snow, there’s very little carols. All we get is Bing Crosby once again trying to save an inn during the holidays… which doesn’t that plot sound familiar.
So White Christmas doesn’t really offer us anything new, but then again that might be the point as the plot circles around the idea of nostalgia. How times were better in 1942… which I’m sure wasn’t the case for a lot of people around the world. But dammit, Crosby just wants a Christmas just like he used to know. I will say that I did enjoy this cast. Crosby make the perfect foil to Kaye’s over the top physical humor. So their chemistry is good, and the chemistry with the female leads works, even though the plot is super thin.
It’s basically an excuse to have musical number, followed by a scene or two of dialogue, followed by another musical number. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing considering the music was composed by Irving Berlin.. The song Count Your Blessings was even nominated for an Oscar. But to me, my favorite number was Sisters, where we get to see Crosby and Kaye dress up in drag, which is rather progressive. But there is one very very cringy number entitled I’d Rather See a Minstrel Show. Now by this point in time, Crosby or Berlin or anyone on set should have known that glorifying the minstrel days was taboo. But then again this is followed up by an instrumental version of Abraham, which is a black face number from one of Crosby’s earlier films. I don’t know if this was an attempt to justify his earlier use of black face from over a decade ago, or what. All I know it left a bad taste in my mouth. Another weird number is when Kaye makes fun of beatniks and interpretive dance choreography. Maybe that was a shot at Gene Kelly and the dancing dream sequences from movies like An American in Paris.
Overall it’s not my favorite musical, but it’s lite and entertains for the most part. It’s something you can easily enjoy in the background as you’re pounding out gingerbread men over a hot stove.
