Inside Llewyn Davis is an incredible new musical from the Coen Brothers. See it if you like movies.
It's a fitting spiritual sequel to O Brother Where Art Thou. Both films are odysseys. Both films are gentlemen, openly tipping their hats and bowing ever so slightly to their Homeric source material about a wily man trying to get home"”geographically and spiritually.
Furthermore, both of these movies are just as much musical events as they are movies.
There's an interesting relationship between film and music. Oftentimes a great or novel music video is used to spice up a meh song (OK Go, I'm looking at you), or wonderful music can distract us from a barebones narrative or ugly stories. But in the hands of a good artist, a music video can be something like a ballet, something greater than the sum of its parts.
O Brother Where Art Thou was only a good film, but it had great music. I was listening to the soundtrack, which my older sister burned onto a CD for me, a good long time before I saw the movie. For a generation of thoughtful young people, it served as the gateway to a love of Americana. The soundtrack became a musical sensation: it was Album of the Year at the 2001 Grammy Awards, and it lead to a series of reunion concerts. How many movies can boast that one?
In many ways, the soundtrack to O Brother birthed the contemporary "neo-folk" movement led by gems like The Avett Brothers, The Old Crow Medicine Show, and Mumford and Sons. Mumford explicitly cited the O Brother soundtrack as their first musical influence, which led them to Emmylou Harris and then to Old Crow. The Avett Bros recorded their first album together in 2002 and rose to prominence in the years following O Brother's release.
So really, the contemporary music scene was started by the Coen Brothers and T-Bone Burnett. Three guys can claim founding credit.
Inside Llewyn Davis is the crescendo of that movement. It focuses specifically on the folk scene, and even uses Mumford and Sons on its soundtrack.
This movie will probably be even more popular, musically, than O Brother. Oscar Isaac absolutely demolishes the folk songs in this movie, and the plot is a bit tighter and more "serious" than that of O Brother. George Clooney's clowny-ness is replaced by a more modern, Brooklyn-esque pale youth with dark, mournful circles under his eyes.
If you're a fan of any of the bands mentioned, you must see this movie. If you're not interested in this kind of music, this might not be your kind of movie (though still unarguably good).
