Inside Llewyn Davis – Film Review

Davis 2The Coen’s never make it easy on the audience. They weave their stories from the inside out. The very inner circle is deep with details and rich in emotion and meaning. As the circles swirl outward the fidelity of the details is dialed back. Occasionally they circle back to the inside but then come right back up, continuing to draw the circles but with dashed lines as they approach the surface of the film. That surface is what we see and hear on the screen. Their process is unique and always fascinating.

Inside Llewyn Davis is textbook Coen. Joel and Ethan leave it to us to color in meaning while they present us with one staggering scene after another. Most films today are cut, cut, cut; never allowing the camera to linger long enough to see everything in the frame. The Coens have perfected the exact opposite approach. They cut when the emotion of the scene says to cut.

Llewyn (Lou-in) played with solid pitch by Oscar Isaac is a wanna be folk singer now on his own after a break-up with his partner. He’s pretty much a despicable, irresponsible person that we have trouble drumming up even a smidgen of sympathy for. Llewyn does not have a home, or even a winter coat. He crashes at a different place every night, carrying his guitar and one bag of belongings. He sleeps on the floor, but on a good night he gets a couch.

He bounces from one bad experience to the next like the silver sphere in a pinball machine. The time is 1962 in the Greenwich Village poet/art scene. He rings the buzzer of Jean (Carey Mulligan) clutching a yellow cat with no where else to go. Ms. Mulligan has one of the sweetest smiles on the screen but can never show it off in this part. She constantly rails against Llewyn but has her own demons to wrestle with. Jean is with Jim (Justin Timberlake) who is connected to the record industry in a more orthodox fashion.

The story is a big circle, starting and ending in the Gaslight Poetry Cafe where folk singers take the stage in a dark, smoke-filled cellar space to perform. In between the bookends of the opening and closing scenes, the Coens take us through a truly realistic early 1960’s landscape. The clothes, cars, settings. All of it transports us back to the time of vinyl albums and big steel sedans, without the political statements. They are masters at conjuring up past worlds.

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Without a clear explanation, Llewyn gets into a car on its way to Chicago driven by Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund) and a burned-out jazz performer named Roland Turner (John Goodman). The exchanges between Llewyn and Roland are rich and hilarious. It’s a stranger’s perspective designed to provide Llewyn with validation that everything everyone is telling him is truth. There is a very large gap between the functioning world and Llewyn’s world, but he cannot see it. He is completely disconnected while being completely connected. Look for Goodman to get an Academy Award nomination for this small but powerful performance.

The film is beautifully crafted from top to bottom. Most of the technical aspects, despite being solid, take a back seat, overwhelmed by the acting and scene choice. The soundtrack was produced by the Coens with T. Bone Burnett who previously collaborated on Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. The music is the heart and soul of the film and if you listen closely and often enough, including dissecting the lyrics which were included by the filmmakers, you can fill in all those missing details.

Llewyn says, “If it’s not new and never get’s old, it’s a folk song.”

Davis Song List

Reviews of other Coen Brothers Films.

True Grit

Burn After Reading

No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men Essay

A Serious Man

Photo Credits: Mike Zoss Productions

True Grit – Film Review

The Coens open True Grit at night with a slow zoom in on a slain man lying just off a softly lit porch, being blanketed by snowfall. The voice-over is Mattie Ross, speaking to the audience from nearly three decades in the future. She describes how her father was shot by Tom Chaney and fled off with her father’s horse and two California gold pieces. She was determined to see Mr. Chaney pay for his cold-blooded act. Her voice is monotone but her passion to extract revenge is beyond vivid.

This True Grit is not a remake of the 1969 John Wayne picture, but a new cinematic interpretation of the novel by Charles Portis. It was the language in the book that drew the Coens to this project. Their love of words was the catalyst and it combines wonderfully with their ability to bring their unusual brand of “theater of the mind” to celluloid. The Coens benefited from sticking with Portis’ classic story line and carefully crafted scenes. Some Coen films take us over speed bumps as they climax, oftentimes ending abruptly after having been so carefully paced, leaving us perplexed, even unsatisfied. Not the case here. The finished product works so well on so many levels and it will be a force to be reckoned with come Oscar night.

After the opening set-up the rest of the picture is placed squarely on the shoulders of 14 year old Mattie Ross, played with spunk and determination by newcomer Haillee Steinfeld. “She” is the real True Grit in this story. On errand to reclaim her father’s body, she inquires about who she might hire to bring Chaney to justice. She is drawn to Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, played by a gravelly and comical Jeff Bridges. A deal is struck and the journey into the Choctaw Nation begins. Matt Damon as Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (pronounced La Beef) has been trying to catch Chaney for some time and joins the makeshift posse. Seems Chaney is wanted in Texas and a substantial reward awaits. It’s a simple story really, but the telling of it is what makes True Grit special.

It’s full of symbolism and subtle foreshadowing—rope and snakes—in classic western style, but subtly updated both visually and sonically. It’s shot on a broad canvas, but the traveling transitions employ a liberal use of dissolves that crisscross the screen, trampling on the cinematographer’s sacred “line.” The set design and locations combined with thoughtful camera choices enables us to go beyond peering into this past time toward living in it with them. All that is incredible, but the language and how the actors deliver it is nothing short of astonishing. Artful diction (Bridges excluded) coupled with precise timing make this experience. Everyone from the main characters, including the bandits, to a stable boy speaks with eloquence and wit. There’s lots of humor, but only the audience laughs. And it’s clean language. I counted only 8 instances of swear words.

The Portis-Coen west is surprisingly polite, not as well policed as it should be, but it definitely had a code of justice, and there was law. This is explored twice. First in a courtroom scene where Cogburn is giving testimony, and in a triple hanging, both expose a desentizization to violence that must have been all too common in those days.

The journey brings them across a hanged man, a dentist dressed in a bear skin, including the head (the Coens only real quirk) and frequent exchanges between Cogburn and LaBoeuf. Damon’s character was official and formal. He didn’t have Cogburn’s patience or experience and their styles clashed, but they ended up working together well as a team, once the crucial moment appeared. The writing is the dominant element and I can assure you it will win the Oscar for screenplay based on another medium. (Update post Oscar: Wrong again.)

Crackling campfire. It is raining. The campfire is roughly canopied by a hide draped at a cant over a pair of tree branches. Mattie pours hot water from a kettle into a large tin cup holding a corn dodger. She takes a fork and starts mashing the dodger into mush. LaBoeuf sits before the fire, coat over his head, one hand on his jaw, which is swollen.

LABOEUF: Cogburn does not want me eating out of his store.

MATTIE: That is silly. You have not eaten the whole day, and it is my store, not his.

ROOSTER: Let him starve!

Rooster, bellicose, stumbles to the fire with a few thin branches. As he leans in toward the fire the water draining off the low edge of the canopy drums onto his neck. He waves a hand back at it like a man swatting flies.

He does not track! He does not shoot — except at foodstuffs! —

LABOEUF: That wazh your idea.

ROOSTER: — He does not contribute! Millstone, with opinions! He is a man who walks in front of bullets!

Rooster sits heavily, a stretching leg kicking away an empty bottle. Rain patters on his hat.

He is a drag-brake for horses!

MATTIE: Mr. LeBoeuf drew single-handed upon the Lucky Ned Pepper Gang while we fired safely from cover, like a band of sly Injuns!

ROOSTER: We?

MATTIE: It is unfair to indict a man when his jaw is swollen and tongue mangled and who is therefore unable to rise to his own defense!

LABOEUF: I can thpeak for mythelf. I am hardly obliged to anther the ravingth of a drunkard. It ith beneath me.

He rises and starts gathering his things.

… I shall make my own camp elthwhere. It ith you who have nothing to offer, Khoghburn. A shad picture indeed. Thish izh no longer a manhunt, it izh a debauch. The Texath ranger preththeth on alone.

ROOSTER: Take the girl! I bow out!

LABOEUF: A fine thing to deshide once you have brought her into the middle of the Choctaw Nation.

ROOSTER: I bow out! I wash my hands!

MATTIE: Gentlemen, we cannot fall out in this fashion, so close to our goal, with Tom Chaney nearly in hand!

Rooster erupts:

ROOSTER: In hand?! If he is not in a shallow grave, somewhere between here and Fort Smith, he is gone! Long gone! Thanks to Mr. LaBoeuf, we missed our shot! We have barked, and the birds have flown! Gone, gone, gone! Lucky Ned and his cohort, gone! Your $50, gone! Gone, the whiskey seized in evidence! The trail is cold, if ever there was one! I am a foolish old man who has been drawn into a wild goose chase by a harpy in trousers — and a nincompoop! Well, Mr. LaBoeuf can wander the Choctaw Nation for as long as he likes; perhaps the local Indians will take him in and honor his gibberings by making him chief! You, sister, may go where you like! I return home! Our engagement is terminated! I bow out!

Eventually they are granted their wish and encounter Chaney (Josh Brolin) who is traveling with Lucky Ned Pepper’s gang. The Chaney character turns out to be a weasel and blabbers on about how he’s a victim of his environment. Pathetic. Hell, I wanted to shoot him. We see both good and evil come out of nowhere in a quick turn of events that allows Mattie to have her opportunity at punishment. But the choice she makes comes with a stiff price that she forever pays, every day of her life both physically and psychologically.

The sturdy, reliable western landscape painted for us up until now is suddenly transformed as Cogburn rushes Mattie to a doctor aboard her horse Little Blackie. The soft daylight dissolves are erased by the blackness of the night, lit by a sea of stars only visible “out there.” Reuben pushes the horse to the limit to save Mattie. Yet another character with grit.

As the visuals build, so do does Carter Burwell’s spiritual score. It’s simple music actually, but triples in complexity when paired with Roger Deakins’ striking lens. In the liner notes for the score, Burwell writes:

Ethan and Joel and I had the same idea. A score rooted in 19th-century hymns. The songs Mattie would sing if she had time for such frivolity. Our model was the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” composed in 1888 by Anthony Showalter, an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Dalton, Georgia, and used memorably in the film The Night of the Hunter. This together with other hymns of the period, forms the backbone of the score, which grows from church piano to orchestra as Mattie gets farther and farther from home.

We don’t know if Mattie ever enjoyed her life or got the satisfaction she so desperately sought from Chaney’s fate. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Highly recommended.

The official True Grit web site can be visited here. I have no opinion on it as none of the links worked for me on my Safari browser.

Update January 23, 2011

In today’s New York Times (Opinion section from January 23, 2011), Frank Rich wrote an insightful piece about why True Grit is so successful at the box office. As usual he is at the crossroads of art and culture. Fascinating reading, The One-Eyed Man is King.

Updated January 26, 2011

I downloaded a True Grit app yesterday for my iPad. It’s contains 63 photos taken by Jeff Bridges during the filming of the movie. He scribes personal notes below some of the photos. A nice way to see behind the camera from the point of view of the lead actor. Also links out to find tickets and showtimes. Go to the iTunes store and search on True Grit. It’s FREE.

Graphics courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Screenplay excerpt belongs to Joel and Ethan Coen, copied from The New York Times

Burn After Reading – Film Review

I have to admit when I first saw the trailer for Burn After Reading, the latest offering from the Coen brothers, I was afraid. It looked like it might be another Intolerable Cruelty. I was still reeling from No Country for Old Men and was hoping for a similar outing. No Country was at the top of my study list, but maybe doing intense films back to back is not a good idea, not even for the Coens. My fear was so strong that I only got around to seeing this film yesterday, several weeks after it opened. I was sorry I waited that long.

All the Coen elements are present. A wide array of familiar characters, plot twists, murder (of course), blackmail and everyone is cheating on everyone. It’s all wrapped up in a nice tidy package in a final exchange inside CIA headquarters.

John Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, an analyst for the CIA with a level three security clearance. Due to a drinking problem he is asked by his boss to take a step back in his career. He becomes furious, and quits. This opening scene catapults the story forward and we find ourselves at a dinner party Osbourne and his wife, Katie Cox, played ice cold and calculating by Tilda Swinton, are hosting. At that event we meet Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) and we’re off to the races.

Since he is now unemployed, Ozzie, as Osbourne is called, works on his memoirs. While we watch him slowly unwind and get a feel for his relationship with Katie, the film moves to Hardbodies Fitness Center, where Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) work. A mysterious computer disk is found in the locker room and Chad and Linda are convinced it is full of spy secrets and begin their blackmail scheme. It’s here that the Coens stop their nice tidy connect the dots story line and start bouncing all over the place. Fate and coincidence take over the plot and the ride gets stranger and funnier by the minute.

It’s kind of a spy movie, but the subtitle (intelligence is relative) hints that these guys may not be the sharpest tools in the shed. The script is funny and the style is dramatic comedy that goes back and forth between horror and disbelief.

Great performances, strong camera work, and witty dialog delivered with fantastic timing make this a really enjoyable film experience. I laughed out loud several times, as did most everyone in the packed theater. Recommended.

Visit the official web site here. Read the background copy of the site carefully.

No Country For Old Men – You Can’t Stop What’s Coming

A brief forewarning.

Some people may find this post to be a little on the dark side. Just remember, I’m writing about the movies. None of these things really happened.

On screen killings are nothing new. How many times have you seen someone get rubbed out in a movie? Probably too many to count. The methods employed to dispense with characters are vast and varied. There are many masters of the celluloid capital crime; Hitchcock, Scorsese, Kubrick and Lynch to name a few. Is there any major filmmaker that hasn’t staged a killing in one of their films? If you know one who hasn’t, please post it. Also, if anyone out there knows what movie was first to show a murder on screen, post that as well.

My study film these days is No Country for Old Men. Academy Award Winner for best picture, director, adapted screenplay and supporting actor. Fantastic. Pure Coen brothers. Murders are a staple in the film world of the Coens. These guys are top notch. Not only do they deliver on body count, but add twists to each one.

Ethan and Joel Coen on the set – Released by Miramax

The choices are carefully crafted and painstakingly staged to keep the viewer off balance, which more effectively builds the trademark Coen suspense. Nothing is ever certain, except that Anton Chigruh is a certifiable psychopathic killer. Anton is driven. He has to do these things. We get the sense he’s been programmed; think Terminator. He sees the obvious and acts.

In No Country characters can vanish without regard to their importance or standing in the story. No one is safe. We’re all rooting for Llewelyn to get away cleanly. And even though he was a main player, his death takes place off screen, and in an unexpected manner. It wasn’t even Anton that pulled the trigger.

Naturally there are always nagging questions. Was it the flirting woman’s body floating face down in the Desert Sands pool? Did Llewelyn consider her offer for beer and get distracted? Did Anton really kill Carla Jean? Of course he did. But in those final moments with her we see a tiny crack in Anton’s method, connecting with his victims (potential victims). The gas station owner, Carson, Llewelyn… Carla Jean. The psychology is complex. But by stopping to explain his twisted mission of fate to Carla Jean, Anton takes himself out of the “the flow.” If he skips the lengthy talk with Carla Jean, there is no car crash. Her attempt to reason with him extracts a small bit of revenge.

No Country for Old Men has six main kill categories. I have compiled a list of the causalities and plotted them in their appropriate category (excluding animals). You are probably asking, why is he writing about this? Why take this time? The Coens put so much thought and care in their craft, one has to study it on every level to fully appreciate. Oh yeah, and it’s fun.

Impressive body count wouldn’t you say? And the winner is… Anton Chigruh with 14 kills. If you include the driver of the car that ran the red light and crashed into him, it goes to 15. After all it was Anton’s fault, a variation on the coin toss game of fate. Read my review of No Country for Old Men in a previous post.

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigruh

What’s next for the Coens?

The Mike Zoss Production Company has a number of projects in various stages of planning and production. The next film to be released is most likely a comedy/drama (go figure) called Burn After Reading. From Working Title Films and Mark Zoss Productions, to be distributed by Focus Features. Picture is currently in post production, and stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. Plot synopsis: A disk containing the memoirs of CIA agent Ozzie Cox (Malkovich) ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it. McDormand plays Cox’s philandering wife and Clooney an assassin. Hopefully it will be released in fall of 2008.

Other projects include, Suburbicon, Hail Caesar and Gambit. Pipeline is good. Get out your body count matrix and sharpen your pencils!

No Country for Old Men – Film Review

nocountrypost.jpgJoel and Ethan Coen have a talent for hitting the audience right between the eyes (sorry). What an amazing body of work. Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, The Man Who Wasn’t There, O Brother, Where Art Though?, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and now No Country for Old Men. Yes I’ve left some out, but these are the important works. I ponder long and hard over how best to characterize their films, but I keep changing my mind. My latest word paring description is dramatic surrealism. Their elements are visceral and easily recognized. Serious but laced with humor. Almost always violent, but often the dialog is as sweet as pie. Usually the situation is a little uncomfortable for the characters and the observer, but you can’t possibly look away, no matter what you might imagine will happen. And as you stand back and look at the whole, something is very much askew.

Watching No Country for Old Men frequently evoked Fargo for me. Opening shots of a bleak, barren landscape, not fit for man nor beast. This is not a world of cell phones or blogs, but one of instinct and stop-at-nothing drive. The locations contain only what is essential to the story, no extras, no filler, just pure story. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Vietnam vet and a retired welder living in a run down trailer park in nowhere Texas. He is married to Carla Jean Moss (Kelly MacDonald). All we know about her is she works at Wal-Mart and loves Llewelyn. While he is out hunting one day (still stalking the enemy), he comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone terribly wrong. Carnage everywhere. One of the pick-up trucks is still loaded with product, but there is no money in sight. He follows a trail of blood–the entire movie is a trail of blood–and comes across the last man standing who has $2MM in a sample case. Looks remarkably like the sample case that held the money in Fargo. Llewelyn of course takes the money, thinking that he can actually get away with it. He obviously doesn’t know about one of the basics of life which states, “Just because you find something out there there in the universe doesn’t make it yours.”

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Needless to say the finance guys want their cash back. And so their man to retrieve it is Anton Chigurh, played with chilling steadiness by Javier Bardem. They could not have made a better choice. His weapon, or “right tool” is a gas propelled cattle stun/kill gun (no bullets). His voice is deep and dark like the rest of his persona.

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Then there is the county sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is approaching retirement and has presided over this corner of Texas since he was 25. Although age-wise, he still wonders why people do what they do, dealing with it through the use of humor and storytelling. He genuinely wants to solve this case so he remains engaged, but he knows the players in this game are out of his league, so he stays on the fringes.

The story is primarily a violent game of chase between Llewelyn and Anton. Llewelyn leverages his military experience to stay one step ahead, but it takes him too long to discover that the money has been lo jacked with a transponder. There is much these men have in common and we see them doing the same things in isolation, such as treating their own wounds. But only once do they actually speak to each other in a chilling phone conversation (rotary dial models only), where each one ups the ante and challenge. Both make promises you know they will either keep or die trying.I was completely riveted to the screen by the performances, drawn in by the dialog, and in awe of how they use the camera and lighting. The editing was invisible, while Carter Burwell’s music (noticed over the end credits) is more environmental than musical, causing the viewer to reflect on character’s choices and state of mind. So many things are linked together, but left unexplained; a Coen brothers hallmark. Perhaps Cormac McCarthy’s novel, on which this film is based, does a better job of connecting Sheriff Bell’s personal and family dynamics to the rest of the story. But here it is not a useful detour. I did however find it interesting, especially when the Sheriff recounts his dreams and speaks of the proud professional linage that has defined the men in his family. In the end he states that he is “over matched,” an observation that allows him to actually reach retirement. Others in his family didn’t fare as well.

Want to see this one again because I still have some unanswered questions in my mind. And as always, can’t wait till the next Coen brothers installment. In the meantime, I’m still looking for the money Carl Showalter buried in the snow.

Link to the official movie site for No Country for Old Men. Embedded within the end credits is a statement that the production is 100% carbon neutral. Yet another detail the Coen brothers have attended to.