Cannes (à Paris) 2013: Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers)

by James Hansen

It was a bit strange when I realized my first trip to France – occurring during the month of May – wouldn’t be for the Cannes Film Festival. Luckily for me, and Parisians, not only do Cannes films open quickly here (Only God Forgives and The Past are already in theaters), but many films that won’t open for a while have a chance to be screened via the Cannes a Paris series. Showcasing “highlights” from the festival’s official selection, there have been plenty opportunities to enjoy Cannes outside of Cannes. Alas, I don’t trust my French enough to see films without English or French subs (my reading comprehension is good-ish). As such, the Coen Brothers new film Inside Llewyn Davis, currently considered one of the frontrunners for the Palme d’Or, was an easy choice. And it wasn’t even sold out!

The soft opening of Inside Llewyn Davis suggests the Coens may be offering a different type of character than we’ve seen in their previous features. A slow ballad rings from the voice of Llewyn (a terrific Oscar Isaac), shot in a classical “unplugged” concert style. The character’s introductory emotional state bleeds through the lyrics of the song. The film immediately hits you with music and there’s a lot more of that to come. Indeed, perhaps even more than O Brother Where Art Thou?, this film, or at least its lead character, lives and breathes through the music. There is a deeply understated, affecting quality that pervades the film, providing it with some kind of backbone as it drifts with Llewyn from place to place. Other forms of music appear as cheap knockoffs, full of cliches and lacking depth. Despite Llewyn’s brashness, the Coens feel fully on his cynical side.

Nonetheless, while different than the leads of A Serious Man or Burn After Reading, Llewyn ends up as a classic Coen character – difficult, off-putting in humorous ways, self-involved, etc. Here, Llewyn’s understated back story adds interesting depths to the character’s wandering, distant nature. For a while, Llewyn’s quest feeds a tale of a man who can’t speak or interact with others as well as the loss of partnership and the toll it takes. He finds a means of communication not through conversation, but through his music, his words, his art. The music as its own kind of language leads to some of the film’s emotional sequences, but also threatens to drain it of its sly humor filled in by an array of minor characters. It fits comfortably within the world of Llewyn, but it perhaps less certainly fits within the entire world of the film. There is something caught in the middle here – much like Llewyn himself – that doesn’t feel wholly...whole. 

And, while the film is nuanced enough to work around a number of cliches, the characters and scope of the film almost too familiar. The direction of the film is sharp and sensitive, but it also never seems particularly ambitious. Llewyn’s ventures undoubtedly reflects a sensibility very much present in the Coens’ recent films – that is, life’s incredible journey as a circular, repetitive road to nowhere – but one can’t help feeling this has been treaded on in the same way before by the Coens. And maybe that is just how it goes. 

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Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Modern Job

by Brandon Colvin

Despite being the least stylized, most aesthetically conventional example of the Coen Bros’ auteur-tastic cinema, A Serious Man is so damn unusual that it might be their most radical, difficult film.

Pondering the film’s (intentionally) obscure narrative and thematic intricacies is akin to stretching one’s brain around an elusive (meta-) physical paradox, encouraging what could be called a “quantum” viewing experience, one hinging upon the fundamental principle of underlying uncertainty—the principle that defines the existence of A Serious Man’s pathetically unfortunate protagonist, Jewish mathematics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg).

Overcast with a complex and complicating membrane of impenetrable spiritual and existential malaise, A Serious Man narrates Larry’s Job-like downward spiral with exceeding intrigue while being more than a little disjointed. As one might observe upon viewing A Serious Man, however, the film’s puzzling disunity may be the Coens’ exact intention, the narrative fulfillment of physics theories and mathematics proofs that suggest our universe is indomitably chaotic.


Larry, an archetypical conventional mensch plodding through a banal existence in suburban Minneapolis c. 1970, finds himself in the midst of a vertiginous descent into an inescapable abyss of mind-crippling, heartbreaking, soul-crushing inscrutability. Beset by fate or randomness or Hashem (God) or nothingness, Larry suffers a series of mounting crises, from the dissolution of his marriage to the bizarre death of his wife’s (Sari Lennick) manstress to his extortion at the hands of frustrated Korean student (David Kang) to his accruing debt and failing attempt to earn tenure.

Attempting to model himself after and seek advice from the “serious” Jews around him—including a slew of ineffectual rabbis, uncaring community leaders, and his wife’s self-important lover, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed)—Larry probes the (non?)meaning behind his misery, fruitlessly investigating the confusing collision of religious enigma and cryptic mathematics showering ambiguous shrapnel all around him. Though his questioning is undertaken in earnest, it is also darkly hilarious—ironic and biting in its unrelenting honesty, sharply devastating in its unsolvable futility. Larry’s tribulations are, like A Serious Man as a whole, tonally paradoxical, both emotionally-lacerating and cackle-inducing—as ambivalent as the uncertain universe its characters populate.


This elusive universe is best interpreted according to two complimentary quantum concepts discussed by Larry in his lectures: the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The first is a thought experiment revolving around the indeterminacy of atomic particles, specifically the unpredictability of radioactive decay. Schrödinger explained that if a cat were locked in a box with a device that released a tiny amount of radioactive substance that could cause atomic decay (but might not), after a certain amount of time, the cat could theoretically be either alive or dead. Because the decay is unpredictable, one could not know for certain. In this instance, with the box locked, the cat is both alive and dead, demonstrating the quantum concept of superposition—the overlapping coexistence of multiple outcomes/realities—in concrete, macrocosmic terms. The cat is not either living or dead; it is both. That is, until one opens the box.

There are, however, some boxes that cannot be opened. Their contents remain immeasurable. Larry’s trials constitute such a “box,” and, as Heisenberg suggests in his uncertainty principle, as he seems to begin comprehending some aspects of the universe, the others retreat from his grasp with ferocious intensity. Nothing can be pinned down for sure. It is always shifting, always indefinite. This is the reality of A Serious Man.

The film’s bizarre prologue establishes the nature of the narrative’s ambiguous circumstances before Larry even appears onscreen. A 15-minute Jewish parable taking place in 19th Century Poland, A Serious Man’s introductory scene depicts the eerie experience a curmudgeonly couple has with what is either a man or a dybbuk (demon) masquerading as a man. The husband (Allen Lewis Rickman), who has offered the entity (Fyvush Finkel) entrance into his home in order to repay its previous kindness, believes it to be human, a local acquaintance. His wife (Yelena Shmulenson) is convinced it is a dybbuk, citing evidence that the man in question is three years dead. The husband remains skeptical.


As they debate, the entity remains seated in a chair, until, suddenly, the wife stabs it through the heart with an ice pick. The entity’s reaction is curious. At first, it does not bleed; it merely chuckles. The wife notes the lack of blood. Suddenly, red begins staining the entity’s shirt, rippling out from the wound. Befuddled and bleeding, the entity leaves into the snowy cold, remarking that it knows when it is unwelcome. Horrified, the husband worries what will happen when the body is found in the morning, feeling his wife has committed murder. Confidently, the wife remarks that she has merely forced evil out of the house. The entity is presented as both man and dybbuk. The Coens leave the box unopened.

Despite a few clichéd moments, a couple of bland dream sequences, and a handful of unnecessarily canted angles, A Serious Man proves to be an intriguing entry in the Coens’ oeuvre. Like Job, Larry and the viewer never receive an answer to the persistent “why?”

All that is displayed in the awesomely destructive power of the universe/Hashem/uncertainty, epitomized by A Serious Man’s stunningly unexpected conclusion. Whether one is a pot-smoking teenager, like Larry’s good-for-nothing son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), or a whacked-out numerological quack, like Larry’s brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), the universe remains incalculable, even with the assistance of Danny’s marijuana or Arthur’s garbled prophecy, The Mentaculus.

No solution is stable. Threats await in the form of racist neighbors, bullies, unfulfilled sexual liaisons, car crashes, subscription scams, lawsuits, anonymous defamatory letters, natural disasters, and x-ray results only delivered in-person. Though Larry is “trying to be” a serious man, he is left dangling over an abyss of obscurity, just like the viewer. There is only uncertainty; and, perhaps, even that is uncertain.

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NYFF: Wes Anderson and the Coens

Although the selections may be far from what the public will call “daring,” the New York Film Festival had an intriguing selection from the onset. Though it is the foreign selections that really caught my eye, the NYFF had two of the most anticipated American films of the fall. Their opening night selection “The Darjeeling Limited” directed by Wes Anderson and the festival centerpiece “No Country For Old Men” directed by Joel and Ethan Coen came in with lots of buzz. Anything directed by Anderson seemingly has an immediate following for anyone from the ages of 15-29. “No Country For Old Men” had glowing reviews coming out of the Cannes Film Festival and is considered by many to be a top Oscar contender.


What is most interesting in considering the two films side by side is the distinctive styles of each of the films and how the style serves the narrative. “The Darjeeling Limited” is exactly what the cinematic world has come to expect from Wes Anderson. Each frame is stuffed full of nifty little images, interesting color schemes, and plenty of slow motion scenes with people running to indie pop music. Anderson chooses the landscape of India to set his “spiritual journey,” which is the only change he makes in his aesthetic or, indeed, his entire film. “The Darjeeling Limited” feels like the Wes Anderson that everyone used to find charming on repeat. It may be this regurgitation of his previous films in the new work that makes “The Darjeeling Limited” feel so forced, uninteresting, and inauthentic in its grasping for a higher level.

From the opening sequence of the brothers running onto the train, Anderson attempts to use his style and images to draw the audience in, or maybe he just expects his audience to be in love with his style from the onset. Instead of being inventive or profound, Anderson’s aesthetic is immediately overbearing and crushes the rest of the film. Whereas in “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tennenbaums” it seemed like the birth of a provocative young directing, “The Darjeeling Limited” feels amateurish with smug references to Renoir and the short film predecessor “Hotel Chevalier,” stiff unfunny humor, and overwhelming sentimentality. The film wants to take us all on a spiritual journey, yet the characters are all so similarly uninteresting that it is hard to want to follow them to the “higher ground.” Throwing aside their baggage, literally, at the end of the film is a slap in the face to audience. Clearly Anderson wants to tie everything up at the end of the film, which is perfectly fine, but the overt methods given his prior work are demeaning and unnecessary. From the first moment on, “The Darjeeling Limited” is less concerned with the story it is telling than with the way it is telling it.




Whereas “The Darjeeling Limited” fails due to its overly stylized tendencies, “No Country For Old Men” showcases the ability of mature directors and actors to blend all of the distinct separate elements of a film into a cohesive and powerful film. The Coens deviate little in their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel and the choice to follow the text pays great dividends. Considered one of our greatest living writers, McCarthy writes about extreme characters with radical points of view in order to illustrate to the audience, who is constantly living in a middle ground gray area, the destructive power that the extremes hold. Though his view of humanity is downright depressing, the Coens along with their actors create subtle nuances in each camera movement and line of dialogue to establish a sly level of humor that helps the audience survive in between horrific spurts of nihilistic violence.

Javier Bardem is utterly frightening and unforgettable as the villain Chigurh, who kills with logic yet no moral conscience- he gives or takes away life at the flip of a quarter. Bardem, too, finds strange moments for humor, as if his hair cut did not do it anyway, which make Chigurh even more despicable. Chigurh is more concerned with keeping his boots clean rather than disposing of dead bodies; he knows that he is indestructible. Just as McCarthy’s character Judge Holden serves as a semblance of pure evil in his masterpiece “Blood Meridian,” Chigurh does the same here. The imagination of the reader can run wild in reading McCarthy’s prose, but seeing the character visualized is chilling. While Chigurh serves the purpose of evil in its purest form, Llewlyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, is an ordinary guy thrust into this situation. By all accounts, Moss is a good man who wants to protect his family. In his discovery of a briefcase full of drug money, Moss serves on the other extreme of the story as pure good. He faces many moral dilemmas on his journey, but first and foremost comes protection of his family and the people who he loves.

The fate of the audience and the common man is displayed by old time local sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played brilliantly by Tommy Lee Jones. It is Ed Tom who realizes the position that Moss is in, yet moves forward as though he has seen this all before. He does his best to protect Moss and his family, but knows that Moss is in way over his head, no matter the efforts of the police or the world as a whole. Ed Tom lives in the real world, apart from the radical sides of good and evil, but even in these gray areas evil has becomes the dominating force. Ed Tom and Moss are both looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, but it is only Ed Tom who tells us that we are all outmatched in the modern world of random acts of despicable violence.

The pitch perfect story aside, what is even more of note in considering the faults of “The Darjeeling Limited” countered to the successes of “No Country For Old Men” is in the use of camera and visual style. Though Anderson has a clear sense of what he wants his style to be, it is constantly bloated and unable to carry the story with it. Roger Deakins superb cinematography works not only to complement the story being told, but creates another elusive element to the world of our characters. The vastly still landscape holds the essence of the quiet and calm world that can in an instant turn into extreme violence. Deakins does need to tell the audience that he is flashy for us to recognize his artistry. Just as the Coens shift the tone of the story, the landscape and mood of the camera shifts as well, not just complementing the execution of the story, but involving itself in the telling of the story without the sense of laughable irony in Anderson’s aesthetics.

While the two films could not be more variant in terms of storytelling and mood, “No Country For Old Men” serves as the filmic counterpoint to the missteps of “The Darjeeling Limited.” Each move made by the cast and crew of “No Country For Old Men” was taken to serve the world that the Coens and Cormac McCarthy were striving to create. The world of “The Darjeeling Limited” was created before Anderson and his crew even began writing.The crux of great filmmaking comes down to a matter of channeling the talent, ambition, and filmic devices in the right direction. These two main attractions of the New York Film Festival illustrate a path that needs some rethinking and the path that nears perfection.

by James Hansen

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