It’s been my opinion since first seeingInside Llewyn Davisat the New York Film Festival in 2013 that it is the best film to be released yet byJoelandEthan Coen, edging out major competition fromFargoandThe Big LebowskitoBarton FinkandNo Country for Old Men.
So, it makes sense that the film, which starsOscar Isaacas the titular folk singer, who is going through a bit of an existential crisis in the film, would be the first film by the Coen brothers to get a proper Blu-ray release from the venerable Criterion Collection.
As always, the Criterion package is strewn with intensely relevant supplemental materials, and in this particular case, none is more enticing than a video interview between the filmmakers andGuillermo del Toro, one of their more well-known fans.
The entire conversation on the disc goes on for 40 minutes, but we got a small taste this morning, which shows the three filmmakers discussing the structure of the film and the mystery of Isaac’s character.
Check out the clip right below:
It’s fascinating that the Coens bring upMiller’s Crossingin the discussion, specifically the personage ofGabriel Byrne’s cold, scheming gangster, Tom Reagan, as it is, indeed, another one of their more enigmatic characters.
One might argue thatJavier Bardem’s Anton Chiguhr inNo Country for Old MenandPeter Stormare’s Gaear Grimsrud inFargoare similarly hard to pin down, but they’re not quite as complex, more typified by a sort of indifferent evil.
Image via CBS Films
Tom and Llewyn have impulses that seem to be well-meaning, if not exactly altruistic, but trouble always finds them and tosses their life up into a frenzy.
In the case ofInside Llewyn Davis, this consistent pull toward bad luck gives the film a rare sort of melancholy, one that avoids sentimentality and pity, as well as outright cynicism, to find a strange, unmistakable truth about the emotional bruises and physical suffering of life as a human or, even worse, an artist.
