Somehow, the Coen brothers manage to make the fictional Llewyn Davis, with all the surreal elements in his life, feel more painfully real. Does the fact that his songs are such exquisite, melancholic gems make up for everything that Llewyn goes through and for the fact that he’s among those who are doomed to be forgotten? That’s the question that every unknown, struggling artist faces and to quote Llewyn, it’s a question that’s “never new and it never gets old.”

The sardonic art of Ethan and Joel Coen, so scornful of their own surly and defeated characters, never has had much room for emotional depth…Inside Llewyn Davis is their saddest and most poetic story ever. The recognizable narrative style—wide sweeping frames with just one crucial thing or person moving somewhere in the frame, moving to overcharged close-ups—is complemented by the mood-inducing cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel.