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Reviews8
rjrozen's rating
There are two problems that the Coen Brothers had to overcome in this movie:
(1) In any movie with a "difficult" protagonist, the screenwriters have to figure out some way to make that character sympathetic. For other movies, the way to do that is to convince the audience that the protagonist is a genius. "Sure, he's a jerk, but look at what a great artist/musician/actor he is!" Take, for instance, Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland in."Judy." Sure, she was difficult and moody and unpredictable and thoughtlessly cruel and most of her problems were self-inflicted, but as a viewer you forgave all of that because she was also an undeniably fantastic performer.
Llewyn Davis, on the other hand? Not so much. He's just a mediocre performer living on the edges of the 1960s folk scene. That's not enough to give him carte blanche to act like a dick to everyone around him. Sure, people in the movie say he's a genius, but there's very little actual evidence of that. Which brings us to:
(2) There are lots of movies that revolve around the protagonist being a great genius, but when it comes time to display the protagonist's genius, the actual product falls far short. I think there's only one movie, for example, where the characters are supposed to have written a great song which actually turns out to be a pretty good song ("That Thing You Do").. More often, though, it's like "Punchline," a movie about comedians who we're supposed to think are funny but who aren't.
In this movie, we keep hearing about how talented Llewyn Davis is, but when it comes time for him to demonstrate that talent, we get mediocrity rather than genius. It's like if everyone in the movie spoke glowingly about how tall Llewyn Davis is, and then we find out that he's played by Danny DeVito.
And those are two really big problems, If you can't convince the audience that there's something to admire about the central character, something that redeems him, then all you're left with is a whinging, pathetic man-child who can't get his life together and who blames everyone else for his failures. Why would I want to watch that?
(1) In any movie with a "difficult" protagonist, the screenwriters have to figure out some way to make that character sympathetic. For other movies, the way to do that is to convince the audience that the protagonist is a genius. "Sure, he's a jerk, but look at what a great artist/musician/actor he is!" Take, for instance, Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland in."Judy." Sure, she was difficult and moody and unpredictable and thoughtlessly cruel and most of her problems were self-inflicted, but as a viewer you forgave all of that because she was also an undeniably fantastic performer.
Llewyn Davis, on the other hand? Not so much. He's just a mediocre performer living on the edges of the 1960s folk scene. That's not enough to give him carte blanche to act like a dick to everyone around him. Sure, people in the movie say he's a genius, but there's very little actual evidence of that. Which brings us to:
(2) There are lots of movies that revolve around the protagonist being a great genius, but when it comes time to display the protagonist's genius, the actual product falls far short. I think there's only one movie, for example, where the characters are supposed to have written a great song which actually turns out to be a pretty good song ("That Thing You Do").. More often, though, it's like "Punchline," a movie about comedians who we're supposed to think are funny but who aren't.
In this movie, we keep hearing about how talented Llewyn Davis is, but when it comes time for him to demonstrate that talent, we get mediocrity rather than genius. It's like if everyone in the movie spoke glowingly about how tall Llewyn Davis is, and then we find out that he's played by Danny DeVito.
And those are two really big problems, If you can't convince the audience that there's something to admire about the central character, something that redeems him, then all you're left with is a whinging, pathetic man-child who can't get his life together and who blames everyone else for his failures. Why would I want to watch that?
