The one song Oscar Isaac never wants to hear again: “Too much!”
If, at this current moment, you are reading this perhaps sitting perched on the porcelain throne, or not paying attention to a reality show, or pretending to be hard at work in an office, and you haven’t yet seen the 2013 Coen brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis starring Oscar Isaac, then I entreat you to drop all of it immediately and do just that.
If you like music (who doesn’t?) and you like films (again, who doesn’t?), then it is for you: a beautiful matching of the two, a glimpse into 1960s folk music in New York and the birth of Bob Dylan’s astonishing rise to fame. Dylan isn’t the focus of the movie, however; instead, that falls on Isaac’s shoulders as he plays the titular character, an undeniably gifted but hugely troubled musician trying to break through in the music industry.
The film is wonderfully low-key and a genuine pleasure to watch, albeit flecked with melancholy and a misplaced cat, heightened by the many levels of impoverishment the titular character faces and the live musical performances throughout, which are underpinned by original songs written specifically for the film. Isaac does several of them himself with just an acoustic guitar, his playing and singing more than worthy of being a recorded artist in his own right.
Alongside the likes of Carey Mulligan, John Goodman and Adam Driver, Isaac was roundly praised for his work in the film, which was nominated for two Oscars and won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival that year.
Perhaps Isaac’s abilities on show in the movie come as no surprise; he has always been a music lover, playing guitar from the age of 12, and grew up in bands as a teenager, although they tended to be ska-punk groups that did covers of Nirvana’s angriest songs. He’s also still in a band called Night Lab and spent time swapping songs on guitar with co-star Timothée Chalamet while the pair filmed the Dune movies.
There is a song that Isaac can’t bear to listen to as well, and that is the 2011 Gotye smash ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, the admittedly very well-written earworm that samples ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ and twins it with an acoustic guitar riff that’s since been sampled for a huge hit by Doechii. The original song is one of the highest-selling tunes of the modern era, the single shifting around 13 million copies.
Gotye, to his eternal credit, essentially released it and then disappeared, although he has popped up a couple of times since, once to release a live album online and once to lend some guest vocals to a fellow artist. He isn’t just counting his money, though, as he refused to allow advertising on video plays of the tune, which ran into the billions.
Isaac made his feelings clear on the song to NME, stating, “I will say it’s a great song, but when I was working in Serbia, it was literally every fourth song played on the radio. In every cafe, every club. Too much!”
Isaac is about to be seen alongside Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi in Guillermo del Toro’s new Netflix adaptation of Frankenstein. The film this week received a thirteen-minute standing ovation at Cannes and also features Mia Goth and Christophe Waltz.
It’s a huge movie for del Toro, who has spent 25 years speaking of his desire to make the film, spending the last ten trying to get it into production with the right actors in place. It’s due to hit cinemas in the UK on October 17th before landing on the streaming site in November.
