Dienstag, 1. Oktober 2013

Filmfest Hamburg: Inside Llewyn Davis


As one would expect from a Coen Brothers' movie, "Inside Llewyn Davis" features plenty of quirky characters delivering, in full deadpan, killer one-liners. These scenes still work like a charm here, if carrying with them a sense of being too calculated and sporadic. The cast is hit-and-miss for me. Carey Mulligan is not consistently convincing as the thinly written, mainly just foul-mouthed sonstress while Justin Timberlake is miscast as her partner. Oscar Isaac, on the orher hand, is winsome and thoroughly watchable as the sympathetic title character desperately in need of a break, pulling the viewer ever closer into the plight of this talented but luckless drifter. Ditto the cat.

Technical aspects of the film are tremendous all around- production and costume design bring out the lovely period details of the 60's folk music scene in New York; the cinematography douses everything in soft, earthy colors and affords them a tender milky sheen; the songs, while not always emotionally resonant, are ably crafted and passionately performed. Overall the movie's easy on the eyes and ears, funny at times and pleasant throughout. It just seems to lack the scope, ingenuity, urgency to be something whole, something great.

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