The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 15 - ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’

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0:40I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is 25 for 25, a big picture special conversation show about Inside Llewyn Davis. Should I sing right now? Please. Hang me, oh hang me. Yeah, that was like slightly higher register. Hang me till I'm didn't go. All right. Inside Llewyn Davis. Yeah. This is our Coen Brothers pick. I'll tell you some details about this film before we dive into why we have chosen it. For the listeners at home, it is written and directed by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. It's produced by them and Scott Rudin, longtime producer of theirs. It stars Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F.

1:13Murray Abraham, Adam Driver, and Justin Timberlake. This movie is shot by Bruno Del Bonel. We were talking before the recording of this episode, a very rare non-Roger Deacon's shot movie for the Coens. Right. Which is an interesting choice for us since we worship deacons here on the show. Edited by Roderick Janes, who is, of course, the Coen brothers. Yeah. And this is another Coen's music movie. And so the soundtrack is once again produced by T-Bone Burnett, just as O Brother Where Art Thou was, and Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, who in 2013 was an extremely successful and popular musician.

1:47Exactly. And now, a little bit less so. But is also still married to one of the stars of this film, Carey Mulligan. So this movie is set in 1961. It's about a New York City folk singer named Llewyn Davis. He's at a crossroads. He's got his guitar. He's trying to figure out where he wants to go in life. He's trying to make a name for himself as a singing star. But he can't get out of his own way. Yeah. And fate won't get out of his way either. And so why did we choose this movie? I do think, if I remember correctly, that the original list was No Country for Old Men, which is the accepted, both publicly and at the Academy, masterpiece of this century of the Coens.

2:29Fargo, not eligible, as my dad was sad to learn. Raising Arizona, not eligible. Miller's Crossing, not eligible. Barton Fink, Lebowski. There's a million. The A tier of the Coens is very crowded, but no country is often considered the A tier. Yes, and it won Best Picture, and so is probably the most widely seen of their films. I think that's probably true. It also came in 2007, which was one of the great years of American cinema in our lifetimes. And so it being the cream of the cream of the crop makes it pretty significant. But I think I put No Country on and you pretty instantly were inside Llewyn Davis and I just said like, yes.

3:12And we didn't even have to talk it out. So maybe we can actually decide why we can talk about why we are both. For me, you know, I did rewatch No Country also this week in order to like be able to justify it. I didn't do that. Be able to talk a little bit why. And I felt even better. I like I felt I rewatched Inside Llewyn Davis once was like, yeah, we smashed this. Then rewatched No Country again and was like, oh, wow, we were like really smashed it. And then rewatched Inside Llewyn Davis a second time because I hadn't seen it probably in like five, maybe. Yeah, five or seven years. And I think for me, in addition to, you know, the basic genre distinctions, obviously, like No Country is a Western.

4:01And, you know, I have limited patience for Dust. And this is about like a struggling artist. And like, and a very classic Cohen's just like loser guy, a guy who it's just, it's not coming together. And how much of it is his fault and how much of it is the world's fault? Actually, it's both. But there is an emotion here. And, and most of it is like anger and regret and stymied. But there are deeply felled moments compared with no countries like total nihilism, which it's a feat of as well. but I just find that inside Llewyn Davis and the Llewyn Davis character stays with me more. I haven't revisited No Country.

4:46I of course think it is also a masterpiece. So to me I'm not I'm not trying to be like yeah you know it's not that it's bad. I think it could be perceived as like trolling by not picking No Country. No Country is a movie that I love. I loved it when it came out. I still love it. I haven't revisited it in a little while. I mean it's pretty fucked up in a good way. And I think it is thematically consistent with what the Coens are interested in, which is sort of like everything's bad and there's nothing waiting for you at the end. You know, that's sort of where a lot of, especially this era of their films, you know, A Serious Man, which is really my favorite movie of theirs of the century, but I know not yours.

5:21So I was, when I was making that choice to pivot from No Country to another Coens, I thought Inside Llewyn Davis would be kind of a perfect meeting point because it is, as you said, a signature, like a typical framework for them. The lead character, what he is doing, how he fits in the world, how the world accepts or rejects him. And it also is, like most of the best Coens, funnier than No Country for Old Men. I think certainly more emotional, as you said. And the music element is pretty profound. And it's really interesting to revisit this movie in the aftermath of A Complete Unknown. Yes. Which, you know, quite literally puts that story onto the screen as opposed to this, which is sort of a draws inspiration from it and is clearly using figures very closely who are in the world, but isn't as concerned with biographical detail as it is with using this moment in time as a portal to talk about what it's like to be alive then and now.

6:22So I think this is an incredibly special movie. I will say when I first saw it, I remember vividly that I did like it, but that I didn't totally, I shouldn't say I didn't get it, but that because it is a quite a meandering movie and it does not have the kind of like rocket ship quality of no country or even a true grit, which is just like a true grits, like a crowd pleaser, you know, a true grit was a big hit. And this movie comes after that movie. Those two movies are adaptations. This is an original. I've probably watched this movie six or seven times in my life. And I, it really deepens every time I revisit it because of the themes, because of Oscar Isaac's performance, because of what I think it means to them and how I think their best characters are often guys like this.

7:07Usually guys. Sometimes women, but usually guys. And so it's just a very deep and fascinating portrait of the American spirit, like the broken American spirit. Totally. That also features beautiful folk music. So I feel pretty good about it. There's a variety of other things that we can talk through. Any, do you want to talk through the other Coens that could have been contenders during this 25-year period? Like, Oh Brother is 2000. We could have talked about that. That could have been a pick. And when my dad was trying to guess the movies on the list, and first guessed Fargo, sorry, and then he was like, okay, Coen Brothers.

7:44And he said, oh, is it the Odyssey one? And I instinctively said yes. And then I was like, wait a second. No, no, it's not Oh Brother. Yes. It's the other Odyssey one. But the cat is named Ulysses, and this is a person on a journey. Who returns home. Yeah, but like, can he get home is like sort of, and what is it is sort of the question. So, you know, I guess this is a stand-in for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as well. Yeah, they beat Nolan to The Odyssey twice before 2025. Yeah, we were talking about Burn After Reading, which is the other film not filmed by Deakins. Yeah, the one Chivo, Emmanuel Lubezki shot that movie.

8:20I'm really stressed. Do we have a Deakins on our list? I'm really stressed. I don't think so. We don't? I don't think so. I mean, that's a spoiler, I guess. and also maybe we fucked up a little bit. I'll pull up his filmography while you're speaking. Okay. But, you know, I do love Burn After Reading. That is pure black comedy. So we are tending with the exception of the Anchormans towards like the, you know, the Dark Knights of the Soul on this list in one way or another. I'm trying to think what else. Oh yeah, we do. We have Stephen Daldry's The Reader is on our list, which I'm super excited about.

8:56So there will be a Deacon's entrant. that's a good one appreciate it yeah there's something really dark and something really light about this movie I think every time it runs the risk of becoming too morose and self-pitying he shows us they show us yeah the slapstick that they're really gifted at you know there's a lot of physical comedy in this movie there's a lot of physical expression in this movie but there's also a lot of time just looking at Oscar Isaac's sad face yeah and his kind of mournful like how did I why am I getting fucked like this You know, that sense of doom. And I think every single really dark or down moment in the movie also has humor in it because, and this is one of the ways that I relate to the Coens is like they can only really deal with the bad stuff through, you know, a twisted, cynical sense of humor.

9:53So you have Oscar Isaac like absolutely pouring his like heart on the line for F. Murray Abraham. And, you know, and that's like the like his big moment. It's shot like he's outside the pearly gates. You know, it's like literally like, is he going to make it or is it not? Is he not? And then I don't see a lot of money here, which is an absolutely cutting, essential, thematic line. And also just fucking funny, like really, really. and they just hold on F. Murray Abraham and he's just like, it's devastating and still a little bit of wit. Or when he plays for his father and there's like, are they connecting?

10:35Like what's going on without words here and through this music? And then there is some scatological humor. So it's, there is, they're working through it and you can feel them like working through it in these moments where sometimes in some of the other movies it's like a little closed off. So... I think that's partially because they've talked in the past about how they don't map out their movies. Like they just start writing and then they just write through to where they think it should go. And a lot of the times they end up with something that is very tight and very, you know, it can be a little suffocating, their world.

11:10If you can't get onto their register, if you can't get oxygenated with the Coens, then they can be limiting for some people. Obviously, they're in a very rare air for me. I love pretty much all their movies, give or take one or two. But this movie is a little bit warmer and a little bit colder at the same time. Yes. And that balance of those temperatures I think is really special here. And I don't see a lot of money here thing is definitely one of the reasons why I think this movie is so profound because it's like these are two guys who I'm not sure if it's a bit rude as a point of view for the film because these are two guys who basically never compromised, who always made what they wanted to make, came out of independent cinema and firmly believed in their point of view and somehow turned themselves into not just artistically, but commercially successful artists.

11:58I mean, they've made movies that have made$100 million. Yeah. And, you know, you point out the conversation between Carey Mulligan's character and Oscar Isaac's character where he says, you were calling me a careerist. No, she does. She says, you were calling me a careerist and I was calling you a loser. Yeah. And that's a really fascinating exchange because he is attacking her for wanting a suburban life, children, comfort. And she is mocking him for having this kind of overmanaged, sacred idea about artistry, which is bullshit. You know, like there is certainly a universe where you can have both of those things, but because he's a person who is both unwilling to compromise and not shrewd, which is a very devastating place to be if you're an artist.

12:44You got to get really lucky. Now, whether the Coens are actually very shrewd business people or creatives, they might be. They've consistently been able to get movies made for 40 years. But it's like, this is rich coming from you is how I feel watching the movie sometimes. Not in a bad way. And then there's another thing too, which is about sort of like the fractious and bickering nature of artists. Where you've got inside the folk scene a lot of different philosophies around what is and is not folk music. You've got a jazz musician who really looks down on the folky. You've got a beat poet who sort of like doesn't relate to anybody and feels completely alienated.

13:22Doesn't say anything. Doesn't barely speak. Except for his terrible beat poetry. Yes. And even, I mean, the rivalries and the disrespect among the folk community. And, you know, Oscar Isaac or Llewyn Davis is like the pure folk singer, quote unquote, but that has diminishing returns. And then he is surrounded by people who are performing and portrayed in this film as just completely insufferable, like very funny. It's mean, but also great. And typified, you know, most thoroughly by Justin Timberlake in one of the great casting coups of anyone's career. I would love to know how aware Justin Timberlake is of how he was used in this movie.

14:15Because he is the classical pop tool. I don't mean like tool like in a derogatory sense, but I kind of do. I thought you actually did. I kind of do. I do think he eventually became a kind of interesting pop star. And I definitely enjoy his solo albums. But he was a boy band machine. And he is identified in this movie as a guy who is basically willing to compromise his folk ethics to write novelty tunes for record labels about going to space. And at this time, Justin Timberlake was the voice of McDonald's. And that's an ingenious stroke by the Coens. This is three years after he is the asshole billionaire in John Parker in the social network.

15:00so he must have some awareness but also like all evidence of the 10 years after this or 12 years and this is going to ruin the tour suggests that perhaps not maybe he doesn't maybe he didn't get it maybe he didn't know that he was being identified by frankly very cold-hearted auteur filmmakers like David Fincher and the Coen brothers anyhow they took advantage of his fame and you think Timberlake's really into Zodiac and so he's like yeah I'm gonna that's what I'm gonna I think it's possible that he thinks he is okay you know what I mean sure so the other thing about this movie too is that he is his character is being cut so hard by Llewyn Davis because he is a member of Gene and Jim this couple with Carey Mulligan do we even I guess we see them perform together one time but we very rarely see them interacting with each other with the other guy yeah the third yes but otherwise yes they basically they're seated at the table in the club for one moment but she goes away very quickly because she doesn't want to be involved.

16:02It's a very clever, semi-self-referential joke. Adam Driver, also hilarious in this movie as Al Cody. Outer speaks. The cowboy counterpart to Jim. And this is early girls era. Like this is pretty early Adam Driver. And also very, very exciting, but early on the scene. It's right on the precipice of The Force Awakens when he is set to become a bigger movie star. I sure wish I could have had at least one movie where Adam Driver was the star of a Coen Brothers movie. He's maybe like a little too big and strong. That's not really what they do. He would need to be a little lankier. That's true. He could get that way.

16:43Not a lot of broad-chested men. Yeah, I mean, in this era, he was lankier. You know, he's lanky in this movie. They're not a lot of swole guys, but... True. So, you know, maybe he could cut back on the macros. to me the number one reason why this movie is going in is because I think it's the best movie about a very specific idea which is being the other guy and we learn this at the end of the movie because there's a big reveal in terms of the circular structure of the movie but it's clear if you know anything about the folk scene from the first moments based on the songs that Oscar Isaac's character is singing that the movie is modeled on Dave Van Ronk Dave Van Ronk was a contemporary of Bob Dylan one of the signature folk artists of the Greenwich Village scene.

17:29In real life, not an asshole in the way that Llewyn Davis is, but... His Wikipedia page is just like, he was lovely and was interested in all types of music and a founding member of the Greenwich Village community. Yeah, I mean, he is a big part of No Direction Home, the Martin Scorsese, Bob Dylan documentary, which is really, really great if people haven't seen that. I talked about it during the Complete Unknown episode. And you can see he's just, he seems like a nice man. Yeah. So it's not ideal that this happened to him. Although I will say Oscar Isaac is certainly a bit more handsome than Dave Van Ronk was.

18:00So there's a trade-off there. But Van Ronk is a guy who's like very loyal to the folk cause, the artistic cause, understood a lot of historical American forms of music and sat deeply in the scene and also watched Bob Dylan hit the scene and Bob Dylan take off like a rocket and then leave the scene and kind of leave behind a lot of these figures. And the fact that there's a movie that is focusing on the guy who didn't win is tremendously unusual. There's just not a lot of examples, especially in the world of the arts. Amadeus, but that's it. It's featuring F. Murray Abraham. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, but at least that movie has a lot of Wolfgang in it.

18:44Yes, it does. And you're like, yeah, you understand. You see him conducting and you're like, he's Mozart. It's doing both. It's the idea, but not the execution. this movie as a kind of counter and that would make a good double feature actually but this movie as a counter we only see Bob Dylan perform once but when we see him perform in the final moments of the movie it also makes sense because even though his voice is not as purely beautiful as you know in key as Oscar Isaac's voice there's money there there's something there with Dylan and so the whole movie is this psychological portrait of a guy who maybe deep down knowing, but not being able to accept that he's the other guy, that he's not the winner.

19:29Right. You know, he keeps impregnating women who he's not dating. His musical partner has jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Right. He's lost a cat. Yeah. He signs away the royalties. Well, he lost someone else's cat. And then he has a tango with his own cat. But he can't even commit to the cat. Some cat trouble in this movie. and he signs away the royalties to the Please Mr. Kennedy song which is in the moment you're like the slow moving car crash what are you doing? Don't sign away the royalties to your pop song no you fool just because you need 200 bucks so yeah it's a it's a miserablest doomed man in a Coen Brothers movie but funny with great songs so easy pick I think I don't know what do you think the like standing reputation of this movie is right now?

20:21I think that it's really admired, but I don't think it's trollish to include this. I guess it's maybe like a little counterfactual, but that's what we do here. But I think also, anecdotally, I told my husband like, oh yeah, we're doing Inside Llewyn Davis. And he was like, that's sick. And then he was like, I'll come watch it with you. And was like, I love that you guys are doing this one. So then I told him some other feature picks and he's like, I don't agree. So, you know, to me, that was a good thing. Among us, you know. Like, look, we got it. I think admired but not celebrated in the same way.

21:00And I don't know whether that's because it mirrors like the other guy trajectory. Can I suggest a theory about this? Okay. At the time when the movie was coming out, we were at the very beginning of the Oscar Isaac moment. Yeah. So he had appeared in Chris Ryan's Beloved Born Legacy. Sure. As the third guy. And then he has a run of Inside Llewyn Davis, Most Violent Year, Ex Machina, and culminating in Star Wars The Force Awakens. Yeah. And he was being presented to us in The Force Awakens as the new Han Solo. Yeah. The dashing rebel. And The Force Awakens made a billion dollars and was a massive success.

21:43And he was very good at it. He's great in the movie. I think that character is a little underwritten. Well, the thing is that Han Solo was also in that movie. So, you know. Not ideal. The other thing is that Adam Driver was in that movie. And I think the takeaway from that movie, which people liked, was that, you know, Adam Driver and then I think also Daisy Ridley were the real standouts. Right. And he was a slightly older guy trying to seem cool. And Oscar Isaac has not stopped working since that movie. He's had a very successful career. he is a little bit closer to like an A plus character actor now than he is a leading man and the leading man thing never fully concretized and so now maybe this movie is a little bit more forgotten than it would have been if he had been in hit after hit after hit in the last 10 years and also slightly more prophetic but it's all baked into the thing it locates an energy but the sense that he is you know he is playing the other guy the person who doesn't quite have whatever it is.

22:42And a movie that I think is like artistically like sublime, but doesn't, didn't commercially break through in the same way that their previous films had, wasn't recognized at the Oscars, is sort of like this diamond that no one's paying attention to because Bob Dylan's over here. Yeah. I guess it's not surprising because there's not anything terribly commercial about period piece about a made-up person who loses. Like, that's just not that's not, it's hard to sell that. The Academy is interesting though you bring that up because they had this grand moment of acceptance. In 96 with Fargo, they were nominated for Best Picture.

23:23They won an Academy Award for their screenplay. That was like a Hollywood arrival moment for them. But No Country for Old Men was picture, director, screenplay. Supporting actor. Supporting actor. This is the best movie of the year. Over There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. And Zodiac and a whole host of other movies. Atonement and there's like 07 as we know like you mentioned at the top it's just a crazy roster of movies. Is that Juno also? I believe it's also the Juno year. Aye aye aye. This movie I think only got two Oscar nominations and you could make a case I'm not sure if I would make this case but you could make a case that a serious man true grit in this movie is there is one of their tightest three film runs yeah and i mean you're it's funny because i think most people i guess burn after reading is in the middle so you can't do no it's before burn after reading is before i think it's before no country no it's no country burn after reading um true grit lewin davis no no serious man True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis.

24:33Right, right, right. But I guess most people would kind of swing back towards No Country to try to make the trio. But I... Yes. I mean, they have many interesting three-movie formulations where they're running hot. But those are three incredibly different movies. A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. And people were just like, this is good. Yeah. I like this. And then they've made other films that we love since then. but this is looking back I love Hail Caesar love Hail Caesar I love Hail Caesar too but like Hail Caesar is you know they're having fun and they got Channing Tatum doing Gene Kelly it's them in Hugsucker proxy mode yeah and a little bit of like burn after reading mode as well and you have great affection for Ballad of Buster Scruggs and and you do not because it's an anthology yeah I do I think it's a great movie but still it's not not major works it's not right So I was kind of surprised when I was looking back at the filmography.

25:33I was like, oh, this was kind of like the last Coen Brothers masterpiece. There's certainly a case for that. I know. And it's 12 years ago now. And they haven't made a movie together since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which is six years ago. And that's an often forgotten aspect, I think, of the amazing year of 2019 is there was also a Coen Brothers movie that year. It just happened to be on Netflix, so it doesn't have the same connection. Yeah. So at the time, people are making memes out of it. So this is great. Yeah, some good memes. Some really good performances in there. I mean, the James Franco meme persists to this day.

26:06Yeah, yeah, yeah. First time. So six years since they've made a movie together. Yeah. Ethan Coen is about to release this summer his second movie. I think this one is actually officially co-directed with Trisha Cook. I can't remember with his wife. I can't remember if Driveaway Dolls was officially credited as co-directed, but they've been writing these movies together. Joel Coen has made one movie, The Tragedy of Macbeth, which was released, I think, in 2021. and I've heard rumors that they're going to get back together and do something else but Joel Cohen is 70. It kind of took me, it kind of braced me to read that Joel Cohen is 70 years old.

26:42So it's not that a 70 year old can't make a movie. Of course they can. Marty Scorsese is going to make a movie at 85 years old. But time is getting short. Yeah. And how many more Coen Brothers movies will we get in this lifetime? For me that's quite sad. You know, I really, they were a big, trampoline for me, taste-wise. Totally. Taught me a lot about how to watch movies. And I watched one of the special features on the Criterion of Inside Llewyn Davis last night. It was a conversation between Guillermo del Toro and Joel and Ethan. Joel and Ethan don't do like a ton of long-form interviews. It was a 40-minute conversation with GDT.

27:17And they just talked at length about influence and things they like and how they put it in their movies. And part of the conversation was that They always rewatch a couple of movies, or at least they did in the 80s and 90s before starting a new movie. This is something that Barry Sonnenfeld, their original longtime cinematographer, revealed publicly once. And then they're like, God damn it. Now we got to talk about this for the rest of our careers. But one of the movies was The Third Man, which I always say is my favorite movie. Did I read once that they said that that was their favorite movie and that led me to The Third Man?

27:49I can't remember, but it's possible. and their films and what their films put in front of people you know Preston Sturgis is also a huge influence on them I love Preston Sturgis that was another person who like unlocked in my 20s those are my favorite comedies in my 20s so it's crazy to look at their career and be like they're not going to do anything else it's quite sad in a time when you can't get old people out of the paint you know these guys want to make a movie together is that like have they said that publicly like we're done they haven't because they don't do very much publicly at all.

28:21But they're not really, it's not trending that way. No. So, one thing that I do think is interesting about this movie specifically is it did make the New York Times 100 Movies poll. Yeah. It hit at 83. Okay. Which is pretty good. And then it hit 95 on the reader's choice. So, it does have some standing. Sure. 95, I would say, is pretty good for the century, for the readers, for a movie that didn't make any money. Yeah. I'm kind of happy about that. But those two Oscars that they got nominated for, just cinematography and sound mixing, I guess there's no original songs in the film because they're all folk traditionals.