The first film in this retrospective series is difficult to choose.
This must be a classic movie. Although the "classic" usually takes time to settle, I don't want to go back to the 1950s when it comes up; it must be a special movie, but if it is too small, it will be easy to lose it. Sound; this must be a movie that particularly touches me, but more importantly, it can touch the hearts of more and different people.
I later narrowed the selection to the post-2000s we are experiencing. Although it is only 15 years old, I still have a lot of deep impressions of different films in my mind. There are the dreams of David Lynch’s Mulholland Road, the exquisiteness of Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Tokyo, the humanity of Catherine Bigelow’s Hurt Locker, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Scarlet General The darkness of "To", the ambition of Charlie Kaufman's "New York Synonymy", the magnificence of Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life", and many other great movies that cannot be compared with my crude language.
In the end I chose "Drunk Country Folk Songs" by the Coen brothers. For the Coen brothers, this movie is abnormal, but it is full of their marks. I chose it not only because of the dreamlike photography and the soundtrack album worthy of collection. I chose it because of its commendable re-seeability. I still clearly remember that the first time I watched this film was at the Chicago International Film Festival. It was the closing film of the festival. Oscar Isaac, who played the protagonist, was also there. After the show, he interacted with the audience and answered various questions. In the next two years, I watched it seven or eight times, each time with a different interpretation. This is not because it has intricate puzzles left for the audience to solve, but because the things I see in movies are always different depending on the mood and life situation. For me, this is also a hallmark of great movies.
"Drunk Country Folk Songs" was selected into the Criterion Collection in the United States on January 19, 2016. Before writing this review, I read it twice again, and I still feel that it is still unfulfilled. It is too early to call "Drunk Country Folk Songs" great, but in my mind it is undoubtedly one of the best works since the 2010s. After all, the films that can be included in the standard collection are "important classic and contemporary films."
If you have watched it, I hope you can review this sad but humorous, simple yet in-depth movie with me, and tell me your thoughts on this movie. If you haven't read it, then I must congratulate you, because you will appreciate a rare masterpiece.
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Serious Review# 1: "Drunk Country Folk Ballad" --- Folk Ballad of the Coen Brothers, Odyssey of Ordinary People
The tone has always been the most prominent mark in the films of the Coen brothers, and they never set the tone for each movie without ambiguity. These keynotes can be based on a specific prop or in the dialogue of a certain character. But no matter what kind of tone is to be established, it is the absurd and creepy horror of "Snowstorm" or the uncontrollable humor of "Murder of Green Toe", they can always make the audience easy to grasp at the beginning. The message to be conveyed by these keynotes is to understand what the pair is preparing for us in the next two hours.
So when I later learned that the name "Inside Llewyn Davis" was translated as "The Folk Songs of Drunken Country", although it described the content of the film very aptly, although it was both concise and meaningful, I felt that it lost the Coen brothers bestowed it. Intuitive meaning. "Into Luvien Davis", the most straightforward translation, just like this movie, does not carry any romance. But when the audience walked into the movie theater without any prior knowledge, this title containing the protagonist's name was full of clues and tone left by the Coen brothers, leading the audience step by step into the plot. As a folk musician, Lu Weien spent time explaining to the audience how to pronounce the name of this Welsh origin, and in the movie he also made jokes about his name. Luvien Davis, as our protagonist's name, can be said to be a verbal name, and this seems to indicate that the audience will accompany him through a difficult time.
The story of "Drunk Country Folk Songs" revolves around one of the many folk singers in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York in the 1960s, Luvien Davis (played by the extremely talented Oscar Isaac, so to speak) He has since embarked on the road of superstars). Lu Weien made a living by selling singing, but due to the accidental death of his chorus partner Mike and his agent did not give him full support for his solo album, his life fell into a difficult situation. Moreover, Lu Weien is usually unreliable and unkind: He lost his friend’s cat, and got married with Jim's (Justin Timberlake) wife Jin (Carrie Mulligan) and made her pregnant unexpectedly, so None of his friends are willing to help him. During this limited time with Lu Weien, we will also accompany him on a long journey to Chicago, just to try to open the door to success as the last try, but this bitter journey without any retreat may be too late NS.
In one of the opening scenes of the movie, Lu Weien said on the phone "Llewyn has the cat", but on the other end he misheard and thought he was saying "Llewyn is the cat". There are different opinions on the meaning of this cat throughout the movie, and some people think that Lu Weien is indeed the cat. The Coen brothers made a small joke to us and named the cat Ulysses. Ulysses is the Latin translation of the protagonist in the epic Odyssey of Greek mythology. It indicates that the protagonist who is inseparable from the cat and even mistaken for the cat will embark on an Odyssey-like journey. The difference is that the Odyssey successfully triumphed after a long journey of ten years, while what awaits Lu Weien is a doomed demise.
Coen Brothers movie list contains almost all genres, such as comedy, western drama, thriller and so on. But if we want to classify them, we seem to be able to find that they are inseparable from the following two. The first is the film represented by the pinnacle film "The Old Nowhere" and the debut film "Blood Labyrinth". In these movies, the Coen brothers can always create an atmosphere of mental tension while expressing humanity while interspersing various absurd scenes, and sometimes even sublime the theme to a philosophical discussion. The second is a movie represented by "Murder of Green Toe", that is, although the whole movie is full of all kinds of bizarre events, in the end it seems that nothing happened. The end of their "Burn after Reading" is a good interpretation of this characteristic.
"Drunk Country Folk Songs" is biased towards the second one. The Coen brothers repeatedly placed Lu Weien’s beatings at the beginning and end of the movie, while the events of the previous week were placed in the middle of the movie. On the one hand, it is like a folk song without a special story. Although the ending is the same as the beginning, it allows us to gain more from the lyrics at the end. On the other hand, this setting makes the audience realize that Lu Weien's life is like a circle that meets end to end, like an endless loop with no exit. It is true that he finally woke up and stopped letting the cat escape from the apartment, realizing that he could not become a superstar, but due to his incomprehensibility in character and his unwillingness to compromise in art, he would eventually make the same mistakes repeatedly, repeating With the same fate. Lu Weien is a poor person, surrounded by various performers who are unreasonably vulgar in his eyes, but they succeed one by one, which is especially ironic. But as we always say, poor people must be hateful. Most of his misfortunes are due to his short-sightedness and self-use, so although his talent is very dazzling, there is no way to win the sympathy of the audience.
It is not new that the Coen brothers like to torture the protagonist in the movie, because they are indulged in describing the failures in various lives, all kinds of uselessness, all kinds of outdated people. Most of the protagonists in their works have only been physically tortured, but in "Drunken Country Folk Songs", only the audience and Lu Weien have been tortured in the past few days with him. For most of the film, there is no clear explanation as to why Lu Weien’s singing partner Mike committed suicide, but this matter was mentioned in the film by different people, who constantly questioned his soul. Just when he was about to arrange for Jin to have an abortion, he accidentally learned that his ex-girlfriend had secretly given birth to their child and left Lu Weien to live alone. He was haunted by an embarrassing life, and he was even more tortured by the haunting past.
Even the photography in the movie tormented Lu Weien. "Drunk Country Folk Songs" does not have the open western scenes of "Old Nowhere", but it has an impressive nightmarish light and shadow effect. Every solo of Lu Weien in the bar, the dust in the air under the lights added a lot of weight to his performance. But the most prominent thing in the picture must be the melancholy tone that runs through the movie, and the mute picture saturation is sucked up like Lu Weien's life colors. Of course, the music as the theme of the movie is not far behind. The first song he sang in the opening scene of the movie, needless to say, is the meaningful suicide by hanging himself. Although Lu Weien's affectionate performance has been cheered, the songs that can sell in this complex world are always those vulgar songs that he disdains. He disdains these catchy songs, and he disdains to resonate with the audience. He never compromises on art. His disdain and uncompromising, like black humor, floods the movie, making the audience laugh and laugh. There are other clever and humorous moments in the movie, but when we all thought it was a comedy, the Coen brothers slowly asked us, as always, can you really continue to laugh?
Subverting the audience's expectations is also Cohen's usual trick. When Lu Weien set foot on the Odyssey to Chicago for the last fight of his career, the audience certainly did not realize that this would be the climax of the whole movie, because it was staged in the middle of the movie. We accompany Lu Weien through the wind and snow and finally arrived in front of the well-known agent, and he finally got the opportunity to express himself on the much-anticipated stage. But when we heard him sing neither the new and weird songs sung in the studio before, nor the catchy songs of the audience, but The Death of Queen Jane (" "The Death of Queen Jane"), how many people cheered in their hearts like me? We have experienced too much with Lu Weien, we have put too much affection on him, so we expect that he will finally impress professional agents with his simple and sincere singing, and we are even sure that this is his first step towards a superstar. . Isn't that all Hollywood music movies like this?
"I don't see a lot of money here." The broker answered bluntly. With this closing statement that broke the hearts of the audience, Lu Weien did not struggle too much abnormally, and even refused to join the chorus group. The plot assigned to Chicago in the movie is only ten minutes, and we have no way of knowing how long Lu Weien spent his thoughts and struggles in the coffee shop before plucking up the courage to see the agent. But we know that after a two-minute performance, he understood that the door to the superstar is so far away.
What happened later didn't seem to be that important anymore. Lu Weien once again entered a huge cycle of making a wrong decision and then being cruelly punished. The most ironic thing is that before the final performance of the film, Jin told Lu Weien that there are music critics from the New York Times. This may be a great opportunity for him to gain fame, but after Lu Weien’s perfect performance, we saw a thin figure, he It is Bob Dylan, who Lu Weien can't understand but will dominate the pop music industry. Yes, in the history of folk songs, the New York Times did not give Lu Weien (or his prototype David Van Longk) any applause, but they praised Bob Dylan's performance. Dylan signed with Columbia Records a month later and has since embarked on the road of superstar.
retrospect, Lu Weien met the old jazz musician (John Goodman) and his taciturn driver (Garnet Hedland) who had been teasing him on the road. There was a little "Waiting for Godot". The meaning of Pozo and lucky in ". The main theme of "Waiting for Godot" is precisely the mechanical life and the endless cycle of life, which seems to be the point that "Drunk Country Folk Songs" most wants to express.
Maybe it's not only that. In my opinion, "Drunk Country Folk Songs" is like a commentary on the art world and even our ordinary lives. For artists, the way to superstars must be to please the audience and compromise artistically. There are countless artists in various fields who try to succeed while sticking to their own ideas, and Lu Weien is just one of them. Most of us will never hear the names of these maverick artists in our lives, but "Drunk Country Folk Songs" gave us the opportunity to stay with Lu Weien for a week. After everything that happened in the movie, like thousands of other unknown artists, Lu Weien will only continue his ordinary art career, continuing the endless cycle that he will never be recognized for his entire life. But also in this week, we were shocked by his talent, regretted his misfortune, and unwilling to his stubbornness. Yes, these ordinary artists will never be as famous as Justin Bieber, but they are real, even more important because they refuse to compromise. Even for ordinary people like us, there will be times when we are independent and unwilling to compromise in our boring life. We will also embark on the journey in order to fulfill our dreams regardless of everything. The only thing we hope for is a happy ending at the end of the journey.
From an interesting point of view, "Drunk Country Folk Songs" seems to be the Coen brothers' self-annotation of their film career. As filmmakers with unique styles, they have never sacrificed their creative soul in order to get a higher box office, but the audience is crazy for almost all of their works. This kind of work that has received box office support and is loved by film critics is really very few, but the Coen brothers can always accomplish this impossible task. And "Drunk Country Folk Songs" is like a love letter written by the Coen brothers to other filmmakers who cannot be as lucky as them. It pays tribute to these unknown people and cheers these uncompromising artists.
From a gloomy perspective, "Drunk Country Folk Songs" seems to be the Coen brothers' vision of the relationship between their brothers. The most beautiful song in the movie, I think it is Fare Thee Well ("Farewell") sung by Lu Weien and his dead partner Mike. Although Lu Weien is very talented, he is not the material to become a solo superstar after all. He needs to cooperate with others to shine. The cooperation with Mike is like everything to him, defining him from all aspects. Therefore, "The Folk Songs of Drunken Country" may be a more personal movie for the Coen brothers than imagined. This may be the result of them nervously thinking about losing each other. After all, they understand how important it is to cooperate with the partner around them than everyone in the film industry. In this snowy New York, Lu Weien didn't even have a coat. As if Mike was his coat, without him, Lu Weien also lost the protection of the cruel and cold New York outside. Unlike the Coen brothers, they worked together harmoniously to produce, write, direct, and edit to create beautiful works like "Drunk Country Folk Songs" for us. Of course, this may be just my wishful interpretation. Trying to solve all the puzzles of their movie is never a good thing.
After all, they are the Coen brothers, who knows what they are thinking.
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