The Coen Bros. folk tale

In theaters Friday: Identity Thief, Side Effects
New on Blu-ray: Flight, A Late Quartet

You have to hand it to them. They never make the same movie twice. The first trailer for Joel and Ethan Coen’s upcoming drama Inside Llewyn Davis is online now, and the requisite speculating can begin. What are they really trying to say? Where are the thematically prismatic Barton Fink and A Serious Man undertones? Can it really just be about a hard-working Greenwich Village folk singer struggling to make ends meet and something of his career?

Well, maybe. The 1961-set drama is based loosely on The Mayor of MacDougal Street, a volume that contained the posthumously released memoirs of Dave Van Ronk. Wait, who? Well, before Bob Dylan broke out of New York’s folkie coffeehouse scene, Van Ronk was sort of the guy most people in that crowd thought was going to be the one to make it big. Of course, that fame never came to him—perhaps because he had a severe fear of flying and driving and rarely left the confines of Greenwich—a proclivity that went a long way to earning him his pre-Foursquare mayor’s badge, but did little for his popularity outside of a couple bohemian blocks near the southern end of Manhattan.

Van Ronk did venture out musically though, reaching beyond traditional folk by recording rock, jazz and, most notably, New Orleans jazz. By many accounts, the enigmatic performer was Dylan’s first guru in the Big Apple.

The title alone would suggest this is less of a rose-tinted love letter to folk music and the New York of a bygone era and more of a sobering think piece and character study. Perhaps it is a good, honest look at talent and success (or the lack of it), and what it takes to transcend one’s comfort zone creatively and physically. That’s what I pick up from this trailer, anyway; that and an incredible one-liner from the underrated Carey Mulligan.

Whatever it is, the movie appears to be another intriguing left turn for a filmmaking duo I do not always see eye-to-eye with, but whom I respect for their love of shooting on physical celluloid and their seemingly boundless energy for taking bold leaps with the movies they make. The film is the Coen’s first since 2010”s uneven, but surprisingly fun-spirited, remake of True Grit, and a release date has not yet been set. The film stars character actor Oscar Isaac (Drive) as Llewyn Davis, with Coen’s regular John Goodman co-starring alongside Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund and Justin Timberlake.

Watch the trailer below: