I'm a pretty big fan of the Coen brothers, have seen all of their films and there are very few that I haven't absolutely loved (Intolerable Cruelty I actually hated, Ladykillers was very uneven, Burn After Reading was unusually ugly-looking for them, True Grit was a nice diversion but lacked a certain something).
So it's with pleasure that I can say that I thought this was one of their very finest efforts.
The soundtrack was wonderful and imo rivals the critically and commercially acclaimed O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
Actor Oscar Isaac, who plays the titular character, is just terrific; his performance as an actor is spot-on and he does an incredible job matching that effort with his musicianship; his singing and guitar-playing are first rate.
The period is beautifully re-created - actually, I have no idea if it's *accurate* or not, I wasn't alive in 1961 - but it's certainly evocative and wonderfully integrated - the desaturated photography the Coen's have used dims things down to a near-monochromatic palette at times (rendering little touches like a common ginger cat almost garish by contrast), suiting the gloomy winter setting and affecting a faded-photograph feel.
Here's Wikipedia's synopsis :
If you've enjoyed the Coen brothers previously then there's no reason you won't love this film, it has all the stylish visuals & sharp dialogue you'd expect from them, plus a large serving of the kind of existential angst they explore in film's like A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn't There and Barton Fink.The film is about one week in the life of a singer who is active in New York's folk music scene in 1961. Although Llewyn Davis is a fictional character, the story was partly inspired by the autobiography of folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Most of the folk songs performed in the film are sung in full and recorded live.
