Llewyn Davis is not a bad guy.

The people who actually know him might tell you different, and they'd be justified. He's self-absorbed, sarcastic, and occasionally just plain mean. But he's not a bad guy. He's sad, he's haunted, he's broken. He's missing something that he'll never be able to recover, something that made him a whole person. And the worst part is that he already knows all these things. This movie isn't pushing him towards realization, it's following him through despair. It's a bleak story with no real conclusion. It's also the best film of the year.

It all hinges on the actor playing Llewyn, really. He's in practically every frame of the movie, and if he can't sell Llewyn's central dichotomy, the movie won't work. Llewyn has to be a jerk, but a defeated one. If you don't feel for Llewyn, you won't connect with the movie. Oscar Isaac is more than up for the job, and he makes Llewyn one of the richest characters that the Coen brothers have ever created. The movie tells you next to nothing about his past, but you still feel like you know everything about him. It's a character study masquerading as a dark comedy. One thing it isn't trying to hide, though, is how layered it is.

Inside Llewyn Davis plays more like a text than a movie. Every scene is filled to the brim with subtext and metaphor, but never in a way that feels deliberately cryptic. In fact, the Coens lay out their central metaphor blatantly in the first ten minutes of the movie. One throwaway line turns out to be vital to the film's central conceit. The Coens really like doing this. They don't dwell on the most meaningful aspects of the story. At least, not until the end, when they start putting pieces together. That makes the movie sound like it's very mysterious and hard to understand, but it's really not. It's a smart movie, and undeniably entertaining, but it's also rich and meaningful. It doesn't survive on the weight of its metaphor alone, but deciphering all those little details makes the film a much more rewarding experience. It's hard to talk about those details, unfortunately, because it's better to have conversations about them on your own. Suffice to say that this film has a lot more in common with O Brother, Where Art Thou? than the prevalence of diegetic music. 

Speaking of which, you can't have a review of this film without talking about the music. Much like the character study aspect of the film, the music is far more congruous with the story and the characters than it might seem. After all, these are all traditional folk songs. They weren't written (except in one fantastic instance) specifically for the film. The Coens make it seem like they were, though, and not in a labored and insincere way. The opening scene of the film has Llewyn singing a heartfelt rendition of "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me," and it's a perfect primer for his personality. "Hang me, oh hang me, I'll be dead and gone/Hang me, oh hang me, I'll be dead and gone/I wouldn't mind the hangin', but the laying in the grave so long, poor boy/I've been all around this world." When he sings that last line, you can tell that he means it. He might as well have written it himself. This sort of synergy goes right to the heart of the film. When Carey Mulligan's character Jean sings the line, "Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name. Lord, I can't go back home this-a way," she gives Llewyn a meaningful look. Their relationship is both hateful and caring. They had some romantic relationship in the past, and it clearly ended badly. Jean despises Llewyn, but she she can't help but be concerned about him. He tells her not to worry about him, and she replies, "With you, I worry." He tells her that she shouldn't. "Yes I should! God knows you never do." The look on her face is one of contempt, and she thinks she's insulting him, but you don't use those words towards a person you hate. When she sings that line and gives him that look, she means to steer him away and help him at the same time. Their relationship is contradictory, but deeply felt. And when Llewyn sings "The Death of Queen Jane" later on in the film, it's clear who he's really singing about.

And then there's the scene that everyone's talking about, the "Please Mr. Kennedy" scene. It's hilarious, memorable, and insanely catchy. You can find it online, but I encourage you not to listen to it until you see the film. It'll spoil the surprise. This is the only song that was written specifically for the film, although the title is taken from a similar novelty song from around the same time. That one was about farmers, but this one's about space travel. It seems like a great stroke of luck when Llewyn is invited by his friend Jim (husband to Jean) to fill an empty seat in the recording session. Of course, Llewyn's not a lucky man, and even this positive turn of fortune ends with cruel irony. "Please Mr. Kennedy" isn't a good song, but it's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be the kind of cheesy crap that you write to make a quick buck. In real life, "Please Mr. Kennedy" hit #1. It's the kind of song that's antithetical to the music that Llewyn defines himself by, so of course it's going to be immensely successful. The final scene of the film also foreshadows the end of the folk movement, in a great way which I won't spoil.

None of those songs come close to the narrative significance of this one, however. Not too long after the opening scene, we hear a recording of Llewyn and his former partner Mikey singing "Fare Thee Well," another traditional song. This one's about a man pining for his lost love. The full extent of Llewyn's split with Mikey isn't revealed until about halfway through the film, and there's nothing romantic implied, but you can tell that they were very important to each other, and the end of that partnership hangs over the entire film. Llewyn doesn't have someone to lean against, to restrain him, to complete him artistically, and he's collapsing. "Life ain't worth livin' without the one you love," they croon. It's telling, then, that this film about an artist who can't succeed without his partner was made by the Coen brothers, arguably one of the most successful cinematic duos in history. Is the film an exploration of their need for each other? It's a great read of the film, one that Matt Singer explores in much more detail in an op-ed for The Dissolve.

Normally in a review this positive, this is the point where I'd explain the film's flaws. But honestly, I can't think of any. There's a long section of the film which covers Llewyn taking a trip to Chicago, and it tends to drag, but the payoff of the trip excuses that. It turns into yet another cruel joke that the universe plays on Llewyn. And because we feel like we sat through that car trip with him, the joke is on us as well. And...yeah, that's about it. A film that's this dense and complex in its themes and metaphors might be expected to stumble at some point. Inside Llewyn Davis is consistent in its greatness. There's not a single moment that doesn't feel necessary, not a scene that doesn't work. It's a film that only true masters of the craft could make, and no one could doubt that Joel and Ethan Coen are masters indeed. If this film doesn't prove it, what does?

And then we come to the ending. The Coen brothers have made movies with surprising non-endings before; No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man come to mind. Unlike those films, though, the ending of Inside Llewyn Davis feels both completely unexpected and completely appropriate. Try as he might, Llewyn can't find an ending to his story. At one point, he walks by a movie theater and sees a poster for The Incredible Journey, the movie about the pets who walk 200 miles to get home. Llewyn focuses on the cat, and the cat stares right back at him. Llewyn's relationship with the orange tabby which is all over the marketing for the film is perhaps the strongest in the entire thing. Maybe that's because it's the closest that Llewyn comes to having a relationship with himself. His Incredible Journey begins before the film starts, and might not ever end. And maybe that's not okay. It's more than a little bleak, and more than a little cynical, and more than a little sad. But that's who Llewyn is. We leave him in the only state he can possibly exist in, and even though it may seem sad, it couldn't be any other way.

Post script: I'm taking this opportunity to discuss spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film, don't read any further.