About Nothing Much, But Certainly Engrossing

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis” covers a week in the tumultuous life of a young, clueless, irresponsible and somewhat talented folk singer in Greenwich Village in 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a mope, no question. He couch surfs from the apartments of close friends to academic friends to bare acquaintances to his sister in an aluminum-sided outer borough. He allows people’s cats to escape. He locks himself out. He wheedles non-existent funds out of his agent. He plays the unappreciated artist with great zeal and indignation — when he can muster up the energy. The only time he comes alive is when he picks up his guitar and sings. Even people for whom folk music triggers a rapid move in the opposite direction will have to admit the kid has talent. Llewyn drifts through various crises — the runaway cat, the abortion he needs to arrange for his friend Jim’s wife, a recording session with Jim (Justin Timberlake), the cuckolded husband of Jean (Carey Mulligan). He is a genius at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He settles for a $200 session fee for the recording of a hilarious tune called “Please Mr. Kennedy” about astronauts (by the John Glenn Singers), with no royalties. Of course the record’s going to be a hit. And because he can’t keep his mouth and ego in check, when Bob Dylan follows him on the bill at the Gaslight folk club, instead of getting in on the ground floor of history, he is getting smacked around in an alley by the irate husband of the autoharp player he heckled the night before. The middle of the story is an almost entirely aimless trip to Chicago, with a taciturn driver  named “Johnny Five” (Garret Hedlund) who smokes constantly and occasionally mutters something about C-list Beat Generation figure Peter Orlovsky. In the back seat is the mysterious  Roland Turner (John Goodman), who either sleeps or delivers rambling William S. Burroughs-style monologues. In Chicago, the bumbling Llewyn, who forgot to wear socks in the dead of winter, gets in for an impromptu audition with the biggest folk music impresario around, Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). Grossman’s not terribly impressed but offers Llewyn a chance to be part of a trio. Naturally Llewyn, the great artist with soggy feet, refuses, and trudges out in the snow to hitchhike back to New York. In a snarky sense, “Inside Llewyn Davis” could be the Beat film that never was, much more so than Walter Salles’ uneven “On the Road” in 2012 (which starred Hedlund, incidentally). Llewyn’s road adventures are hardly the stuff of romance — they are long, mostly boring journeys with occasional moments of negative excitement (a drug overdose, an arrest, and an animal hit on the highway).  Llewyn’s not a bad person, especially. He’s just thoughtless, and there is no indication that he’s ever going to learn from the setbacks he suffers as the result of his self-absorption. As usual, the Brothers Coen deliver the goods in terms of the screenplay and direction. “Where’s it’s scrotum?” is destined to be one of those movie lines that gets cited elsewhere (it involves the missing cat). Ultimately, there’s not a lot inside Llewyn Davis — and for a movie about nothing much, it certainly is engrossing. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is rated R for language and sexual references. It is playing widely.