Inside Llewyn Davis

I hesitate to give the new Coen brothers movie top marks mostly on account of its staying a little too much outside its title character. At the same time, however, I give it special credit for its diligence and resourcefulness in suggesting character insights while staying resolutely focused on exterior events. It’s partly a kind of triangulation—our picture of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) derives less from him personally and more from the revealing fragments of recognition that arise via the assortment of characters and incidents he encounters in the course of the story. The story itself is fragmentary—a few rather fraught and scattered days in the life of a not-quite-successful (and more or less homeless) folk singer in New York’s Greenwich Village circa 1960. Musical performances (mostly in the era’s coffeehouses) are interspersed with a disparate array of lively scenes. For me, the cat, the recording session, the road trip, the simperingly permissive academic couple, the cramped stairways and apartments, the solemn and attentive audiences at the coffeehouses, and the soldier/folk singer are the best of it. Pageant Theatre. Rated R