Oscar Isaac (pictured above) plays a morose, melancholic folk singer in the best performance of his career. If you only know him as Poe Dameron from Star Wars, you should change that (Courtesy of creative Commons).
Oscar Isaac may be the best actor that you haven’t paid much attention to. Sure, fans of Star Wars know him as the charming, reckless starfighter pilot Poe Dameron, and if you’re into awful superhero movies then you might recognize him looking like a bad “Power Rangers” monster during his turn as the titular villain in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Would those kinds of roles, however, explain why a 2017 Vanity Fair article described Isaac as “the best dang actor of his generation?”
If you haven’t stepped away from the sterilized comfort of focus group-tested, well known intellectual property then you likely don’t have a clue why the pop culture magazine would make that kind of seemingly hyperbolic claim. I got as hyped as anyone when Captain America caught Thor’s hammer in Avengers: Endgame, but if popular Hollywood blockbusters are the only thing you watch then you’re isolating yourself more than Iron Man before Captain Marvel brought him back to Earth.
Isaac’s career mostly seems to follow an “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” kind of trajectory as the Guatemalan American heartthrob rarely finds himself as a leading man. His lack of starring roles is a damn shame, however, because the ease with which he navigates his plethora of talents—innate charisma, musical gifts, comedic timing and dramatic depth—result in the actor stealing any scene he appears in.
In honor of Oscar Isaac’s 41st birthday on Monday March 9, it’s fitting to take a look at one of the actor’s rare opportunities as a leading man and undeniably his best work as an actor. A 2013 Coen Brothers’ movie finds him playing a morose, down-on-his-luck folk singer in 1950s New York City. and Isaac rises to the occasion and delivers one of the most affecting, introspective performances in contemporary cinema. Inside Llewyn Davis, WTF?
Isaac’s breakout movie isn’t really about anything, plot-wise. Rather, Inside Llewyn Davis is a kind of zoom-in narrative; it takes a very specific setting—the 1950s New York folk scene—and a specific character—Isaac’s Llewyn Davis—and hyper focuses on those specificities. Instead of following a Freytag’s pyramid structure, the movie positions the audience in a way that simply allows them to spend a week in Llewyn’s life—even if the week’s events seemingly culminate in nothing more than “Cats” the road trip.
The result is an atypical, fascinating viewing experience that at first glance seems vague enough to allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Upon closer examination, however, the movie is filled with intricate allusions and aesthetic visual choices that inform a nuanced critique on authenticity and the cyclical nature of pursuing ambition while holding on to a problematic sense of pride. That reading may seem heady and complex, but Isaac’s powerhouse performance is the affective engine that propels the melancholic machine and makes the film far more accessible than first glance makes it seem.
Not only is Isaac one of the most handsome actors in Hollywood, he surprisingly moonlights as the industry’s Woody Guthrie. Inside Llewyn Davis opens with a close up of a rugged, ravishing Llewyn alone on stage as he is everywhere else in his life. “If it was never new, and never gets old, then it’s a folk song,” he banters before exploding in a sorrowful rendition of the folk classic “Fare Thee Well.”
Llewyn leaves the stage and gets his ass beat by a stranger in an alleyway—while it doesn’t kill him, I read that the encounter marks the beginning of an allegorical rendition of Llewyn’s journey through a “Divine Comedy”-esque version of Purgatory. In other words, he wakes up and meets a precious widdle orange tabby cat who serves as the Virgil to Llewyn’s Dante.
Now, reader, you may be thinking that I’m reading far too into this non-narrative folk movie, but here’s the thing—the Coen brothers, who directed the movie, already have a well-established relationship with mythology. In 2000 the directors released a movie called O Brother, Where Art Thou? which is quite explicitly a retelling of Homer’s “Odyssey.”
Back to the mopey folk boy and his allegorical kitty guide: in the week that follows his ass beating, Llewyn goes through a series of ordeals that all, in one way or another, navigate the seven deadly sins. Why does this matter? Because in Dante’s “Purgatorio,” the in between realm is established as a mountain organized into seven terraces—one for each sin.
In the movie, Llewyn has a wrathful temper tantrum at a dinner party, he envies a stiff military man with a golden voice and greater career success and his lust leads to the impregnation of his friend’s wife. Objectively, he’s not the most morally great person, but Isaac personifies the character with tragic pride and the actor’s intrinsic likability, so viewers can’t help but wish for the best for Llewyn.
Guiding him between these dalliances is Virgil-nine-lives, who serves as Llewyn’s only ally and often his most redeeming quality—getting to see the attractive actor walk around cradling an adorable animal is just a bonus. The cat is easily the most perplexing and fascinating part of the movie, as no matter what happens to Llewyn, there’s always an amber feline that ends up by his side.
In “The Purgatorio,” Mount Purgatory is meant as a way for repentant sinners to address the natures of sin, vices and virtue as they work to achieve personal betterment—the more they better themselves, the higher up the mountain they climb. Inside Llewyn Davis seems to track with this allegorical inspiration except for one major issue: Llewyn doesn’t change, not even a little bit.
The movie climaxes in a moment where Llewyn, after traveling to Chicago with the cat, hits it with his car and watches as it limps into the woods—his guide is gone, and his journey up the mountain is over. That is, until he returns to a friend’s house in New York only to discover that their runaway orange tabby cat had returned.
Inside Llewyn Davis ends with a scene that mirrors its first, with the folk singer singing the same song and getting beat up in the same alley. As Llewyn says before both performances, “if it never was new and never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” Folk songs don’t change, neither does mythology, really—and Llewyn certainly stays upsettingly stagnant. The purgatorial cycle begins again, and the audience knows it’s hopeless.
The character isn’t a good person, but he’s sympathetic, relatable and the perfect vehicle for a wildly underappreciated actor to show why that underappreciation shouldn’t be the case.