The film follows one quiet, circular week in the life of Llewyn Davis, a folk singer drifting through New York, trying to be heard while barely managing to hold himself together. He fails at both, again and again. Oscar Isaac – an actor I didn’t know before this film -is extraordinary. He sings live, in full, with a fragile intensity that gives the music its soul. The songs linger, modest and beautiful, long after they end. The film unfolds without urgency, almost without plot, and leaves behind a soft but persistent feeling of emptiness. This sensation is heightened by the final scene echoing the first: life does not move forward here, it turns in on itself, repeating the same refrain. It is unmistakably a Coen brothers film, though stripped of much of their usual irony – more subdued, more muted, perhaps less sparkling, but quietly faithful to its melancholy tone.
“I should have had you wear double condoms. Well, we shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but if you ever do it again, which as a favour to women everywhere, you should not, but if you do, you should be wearing condom on condom, and then wrap it in electrical tape. You should just walk around always inside a great big condom because you are shit!”