The Coen Brothers’ new movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, stars Carey Mulligan, a heavily bearded Justin Timberlake, and John Goodman along with Oscar Isaac as Davis, a folksinger trying to make a name for himself in the New York folk scene armed with only an acoustic guitar and an orange cat. Set in the 1960s, the Coens based their film loosely on memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk, a blues-loving singer-songwriter who called Greenwich village home and counted Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan among his disciples.
A dark-haired Carey Mulligan plays Jean Berkey, a character who’s billed as a (former) love interest but comes across more like an arch nemesis. “You have not heard one nice thing about me from Jean,” Davis says, by way of introduction, to a soldier who’s just sworn that he has. Then, at the trailer’s halfway point, there’s Jean lamenting the fact that she and Davis ever had a physical relationship: “If you ever do it again, which as a favour to women everywhere you should not, but if you do, you should be wearing condom on condom and then wrap it in electrical tape,” she advises. (I think she still likes him.)
Also in the film are not one, but two Girls stars: Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky—though the pair don’t appear in the trailer (unless that’s Driver in the cowboy hat at 0:39). Luckily John Goodman’s ridiculous haircut more than makes up for that (think Moe from The Three Stooges, only shorter and cut closer to Goodman’s noggin).
The two minute trailer is set to Dylan’s ‘Farewell’ which provides a slow, quiet back drop for the Coen Brother’s subtle and witty dialogue, and adds to the grey, semi-bleak, semi-hopeless feel of the clip.
I just hope everything turns out all right for the cat.
