Inside Llewyn Davis – Soundtrack

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Bob Dylan, Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis, Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, Stark Sands, T Bone Burnett

Sweet melancholy folk.

The music (of course!) in the Coen’s film of Inside Llewyn Davis was absolutely integral to its charm, and with images from the film spooling in my mind’s eye and music tantalisingly playing, half remembered, ditto, getting the soundtrack was a must

Oscar Isaac, on both CD and film is stellar. Though I found myself wondering what Oscar Isaac himself naturally plays and sounds like; as a clearly consummate actor, I suspect what we may have here is Llewyn Davis as musician and singer – Isaac himself may have quite different musical qualities. One of the hallmarks of the film is its loving steeping into the style of the times, both vocally and instrumentally – listening to Dave van Ronk’s playout track of Green Green Rocky Road, and the penultimate track of an unreleased studio recording of Dylan singing ‘Farewell’ in the context of the other 12 tracks shows this. There is a similar plangent, dourly tender quality to Isaac’s voice as in that early Dylan track – adding a nice little irony to the use of the Dylan at the end of the film, as a reminder of ‘then everything changed-– Llewyn Davis SOOOO close but not quite there!

I couldn’t QUITE go the full 5 star on the soundtrack, only because there are 3 tracks I skip over, as not to my ears for listening to outwith the film – the ‘joke’ Please Mr Kennedy, the very traditional old bouncy folk Roving Gambler, and The Storms Are On The Ocean (hope no one punches me for this – see the film!)

The rest are fabulous, as songs, as arrangements by the performing artists and T Bone Burnett, and as instrumental and vocal renditions.

But………I do agree with the CD sleeve note compiler that standout of many standouts is the rendition of Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) with Isaac and Marcus Mumford, who is co musical producer. This is ineffable! Isaacs darkly honeyed, anguished vocals woven with the sweeter, lighter quality of Mumford.

There are so many little teasers to performers of that time and slightly later, in this music – from the Peter, Paul and Mary of Stark Sands, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, the on-the-verge-of early Simon and Garfunkel on the Isaac, Mumford track, and the quality of an almost but not quite there early folky Dylan from Isaac himself. Stark Sands rendition of Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind is also a real delight.

The album is definitely a fuller experience if you saw the film, but pretty darned fine on its own.

Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon USA

Inside Llewyn Davis

Tags

Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Garrett Hedlund, Inside Llewyn Davis, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac

Uncomfortable, hilarious, poignant and musical is the brew

This Coen Brothers film, about the burgeoning folk scene in the early 60s had me wincing, laughing, and absorbed for its 90 minutes. The film opens in Greenwich Village in 1961 at a precise time just BEFORE Dylan burst onto the scene.

Llewyn Davis (an excellent performance by Oscar Isaac) is an utterly self-obsessed, careless, narcissistic musician. He is however a man of talent, self-belief, and creativity. And also laziness, prickliness and melancholy.

So the nub of the film is the self-obsession and belief which the artist MUST have, if they are to be putting their creative vision out there – married with the fact that the person themselves may not be particularly likeable. We (the consuming public) half forgive the often careless and badly behaved artist if their WORK touches us.

The Coens present us with this – in many ways Davis is a rather unlikeable human being, careless of everyone else’s feelings, tender of his own. At yet, there is a curious vulnerability about him which is attractive enough to allow him to use people, because they see something in that vulnerability which they want to protect, not to mention a sense that what the artist creates may be much finer than the artist himself. So, as that fineness of creation is IN the artist, this means they must, surely, be a better person than they appear to be. Well, that I think is the theory that has artists forgiven for what would be unindulged behaviour in non-artists.

Maybe we do believe, unlike what Orwell says, that an artist IS a special kind of man!

Davis stumbles through, journeying from New York to Chicago and back, in pursuit of fame and fortune, insulting people wittingly and unwittingly, coercing his way into places to stay, meals to be fed – and making at one point a terribly wrong decision around a recording session which the audience knows will sting. Davis is careless and selfish, sure, but he is also gauche and possessed of a certain gullible innocence – he both exploits and IS exploited.

I’m sure I’m not alone is also rooting for the parallel ginger cat story, one of those wonderfully real Coenesque eccentricities, which left me, as a cat fancier, wondering and worrying about one development. (can’t say more, spoiler avoider)

Llewyn Davis’ has a Dylanesque musical style and voice, and indeed Oscar Isaac has some of that intense street-waif sexiness of the young Dylan, as in the album cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and there is almost a sub-text of ‘could this be a version of Dylan’. There is a neat barbed moment around this in the film, which had me wincing and laughing in equal measure.

With a great musical trawl through, in terms of live performance and soundtrack music, this was a thoroughly enjoyable film

Other performances of note in the film are the sweet faced, sweet voiced, foul mouthed and angry character played by Carey Mulligan, John Goodman as a fairly obnoxious jazz musician and Garrett Hedlund as Johnny Five, a beat poet, in the road/Chicago section of the film.

The 40 odd minute ‘extras’ have a certain rough-cut charm, probably particularly to musicians.

I have one small criticism of the sound quality of the spoken material, which seemed unusually quiet and muttery from some of the performers, so I had to have the volume turned up beyond normal levels to properly hear much of the dialogue.

I received this DVD as a copy for review purposes from Amazon Vine UK

Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon USA