One of the greatest works of criticism about the Coen brothers comes from Screentakes’s Jennine Lanouette in her review of “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
The 2013 drama is arguably one of Joel and Ethan Coen’s greatest works. The film follows a grieving Greenwich Village folk singer as he grapples with a failing career and the suicide of his creative partner. His life is beset with greater and greater failures, up to and including having his career overshadowed by folk singer Bob Dylan.
As Lanouette argues, the film’s psychological underpinning is rooted in the idea of creative partnership and separation anxiety, and this realization made her weep.
“It’s a personal film! That’s what got under my skin. ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ at its core, is nothing less than a big imagining...