Review of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) by Jonathan G — 31 Dec 2015

I'm going to call this genre hipster trash. Don't get me wrong, Inside Llewyn Davis isn't true film trash, it's just that my disdain for these films is getting to be a little to much to bear.

There are a few things to like about Inside Llewyn Davis. Oscar Isaac is proving to be one of the hottest young talents in Hollywood and his ability to morph into characters is putting him on a really high level.

Once again, with Llewyn Davis, he creates a character that is totally distinct from his real life personality or the viewer's construction of him as an actor. The performance is impressive, but unfortunately, it can't save the film.

The score is lovely, in a rather angst-y type manner. Other actors and actresses offer decent but fairly one dimensional supporting parts. There are some interesting lines. Overall though, Llewyn Davis just heads where a dozen other movies in the last five years have gone.

It's flat, the story repeats itself, it's folksy, there are lots of beards and trendy jackets. The effect is underwhelming. It isn't that the film doesn't have a competent philosophical message or that anything about it represents inherently bad film making, but I just can't help but feel that there are movies out there with infinitely more appeal to the a viewer and less of the money pull to Instagram-ing, coffee drinking hipsters.

Take the recent film Frank for instance. The film has many of same themes in regards to art and music as well as a transformative (to say the least) performance from the lead star. However, instead of devolving into a repetitive, gray toned and drawn out trend fest, Frank provided a film so odd, so out of place, that it drew the attention of the audience for the whole film.

As icing on the cake, the entire cast really distinguished themselves and managed to develop as characters in ways that the members of the Llewyn Davis cast never get to do. I can't say everything about this film was bad, but this genre, whatever it is, is incredibly tedious.

It's boring and pretentious, with no real reward for the viewer, other than the "I watched a trendy movie" badge that gets batted around at poetry slams on the regular. The real reward goes to the directors, who get to brag to their friends about how their autopilot of a film swept an ignorant generation right off their feet.