All round decent effort from Joel and Ethan Coen in their latest film, in which folk singer/guitarist (Oscar Isaac) navigates the early 60's Greenwich Village scene, and one by one burns his bridges as he struggles to get gigs, gets a female folk singer (Carey Mulligan) pregnant, and surfs from couch to couch as he attempts to establish himself as a folk musician. An ill-fated trip to Chicago sees him sharing a car with a heroin-using jazz pianist (John Goodman), and eventually he decides to rejoin the merchant navy, but even this doesn't work out for him. Thje film ends as Issac's set at a folk club is followed by that of a somewhat well-known emerging protest-folk musician, and Isaac (after taking another beating) sees his life going absolutely nowhere.
Oscar Isaac acquits himself well as the dissolute musician who just can't seem to get anywhere. Carey Mulligan is striking and mean-mouthed at the same time, and John Goodman's role is brief but still convinving. The plot moves along at a fair old pace, and there are one of two laugh out loud moments amongst the more sombre scenes of the film. The folk music soundtrack is overall fairly decent, and the film looks very good - Greenwich Village of the time being evoked pretty well. There's a long-running meme about a runaway cat, and Garrett Hedlund's short role as a near-silent, chain smoking beat poet is certainly textbook Coen territory.
So, "Inside Llewyn Davis" is a nice addtion to the Coen oeuvre, and worth seeing, even if folk music doesn't particularly interest you. One slight issue, however: in the recording seesion scene, an electric guitar can clearly be heard on the soundtrack, even though the scene in question has acoustic guitars only. A bit early to be citing Dylan's electric period, methinks!