The trailer for the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis just released, months after the folk music drama was awarded the Grand Prix by the jury of the Cannes Film Festival this spring, so its release is by no means a first look at the '60s-set musical drama. If anything, the trailer is a bit lackluster compared to the more enthusiastic reviews that came out of the festival.
What's most striking about the trailer isn't how the Coens' lay out the struggles of the title character (Oscar Isaac), a young folkie breaking into the Greenwich Village musical scene, but the visual choices. The movie appears to have been color corrected to give it a washed-out, vintage feel, but the palette felt off to me. Normally I like movies more after the colors have been amped up beyond their natural look, but the feature also had a soft-focus look that bothered me. That said, Variety's review mentions the feature has "playful, evocatively subjective reality," which allows the filmmakers to "[avoid] the problems endemic to most period movies." Maybe that's where the soft, washed-out cinematography comes in.
The trailer gives a nod to the major actors: Carey Mulligan, almost unrecognizable, as a dark-haired woman impregnated by Davis; recurring Coen Brothers player John Goodman; and Justin Timberlake. About a minute into the trailer, Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons) sings a cover version of Bob Dylan's "Fare Thee Well." The CBS Films release comes out Dec. 6, and if its Cannes reception holds, the Coen Brothers will be making another trip to the Academy Awards in early 2014.
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