Two sides, one (bizarre) coin

Two of 2013’s most highly acclaimed films— the Coen bros.’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” and Spike Jonze’s “Her”—center on the isolated and adrift

The Coen Bros. are one of a rare breed of modern filmmakers who make you happy you were born during their lifetimes, that you’re around to get excited about something new from their fevered imaginations every couple of years. Even their missteps are interesting and thoughtfully made (“Intolerable Cruelty,” “The Ladykillers”), while many of their best are still some of my favorite films ever—think “Miller’s Crossing” and “Barton Fink.” Who believes the world would be a better place without “Raising Arizona”? I don’t know who, but they must be miserable people.

Their latest, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” feels like minor Coen’s, yet is so effortlessly directed, punctuated with wry humor and vibrant music, that it overcomes its purposefully languid narrative through sheer force of talent.

When we meet Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), he’s getting the shit kicked out of him after performing a gorgeous rendition of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the Gaslight Theater, for reasons unknown. A tall, dark, stranger in a back alley is his assailant. It’s 1961 in New York City, and Llewyn is couch surfing through Manhattan while trying to scrape by. He plays little gigs as a folk singer, amid the ferment that was giving root to legends like Bob Dylan. He has talent and a record to sell—though, his management seems none too enthusiastic about selling it—but something is broken in Llewyn Davis.

One couple who lends him a couch—music scholars named the Gorfeins (Ethan Phillips and Robin Bartlett)—inadvertently send Llweyn on a strange odyssey when their cat escapes the apartment. Llewyn is locked out trying to retrieve it. Stuck with protecting the cat until the Gorefeins return home, he turns to his friends, a folk-singing couple called Jim and Jean (Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan), for a couch to sleep on and a place to keep the cat safe. When it turns out that Llewyn and Jean have a bit more history than just friendship—and when he ultimately loses the cat anyway—it sets a series of events in motion that peel back the layers of Llewyn’s life, revealing why the guy is such a prickly asshole (hint: things used to be a lot better).

On the surface, there isn’t a strong narrative through-line to “Inside Llewyn Davis,” but there is a thread that binds seemingly random series of events. Fate and opportunity team up to teach Llewyn lessons, though whether he really learns anything from them is another story. Fate’s favor seems so haphazard and in Llewyn’s Sisyphusian world, where musical success is always just out of his reach, where every step forward invariably means two steps back and where his perseverance to do the right thing—like save that stupid cat—luck is usually rewarded with even more misfortune.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” takes the dark, rueful themes of “A Serious Man” and leavens them with the musical joys of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” to craft a beautifully balanced, truly graceful whole. This is why it seems like minor Coen’s, though it’s quite the opposite. The point isn’t terribly obvious and the humor (when it’s there) is subdued, except when John

Goodman appears. He plays a strung-out jazz musician in a role that amounts to an extended cameo. But the more we get to know Llewyn as a kind of anti-hero, the more we can relate to his travails, even when he seems to deserve most of what he gets.

Oscar Isaac and the soundtrack of the film are the standouts. Based loosely on the life of folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who was a rising star in the ‘60s, Isaac lends a brooding frustration fed by Llewyn’s barely veiled traumas, which burst forth in his heartfelt songs. That music, compiled and produced by the venerable T. Bone Burnett and Marcus Mumford (of Mumford and Sons fame) and performed by Isaac and Timberlake (among others) becomes a character all its own. Carey Mulligan is one-note as Jean while Timberlake is the film’s sunny grotto of optimism. If the session sequence where he records a jaunty protest song (“Please, Mr. Kennedy”) with Isaac and Adam Driver doesn’t get you laughing, then you must be having a worse day than Llewyn Davis.

Spike Jonze cut his teeth on music videos, shorts and cameo acting gigs before he burst into feature-film notoriety with “Being John Malkovich,” a film that seemed to carry the cultural weight afforded to just about anything written by Charlie Kaufman. But, for me, it was their follow-up, “Adaptation,” that heralded Jonze’s clear, meticulous, and exciting talents behind the camera.

“Her” is Spike Jonze’s second foray as writer and director (after “Where the Wild Things Are”) and here he has crafted as unique a love story as anything Kaufman might have written (though it’s still no “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”).

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is on the emotional ropes a year after his wife dumped him. Living in a cold, perfect high-rise in a near-future Los Angeles, he spends his days dictating love letters for a firm that sells bespoke correspondence for those who no longer write letters themselves. He’s the best at his job, living vicariously through his work. After hours, when he’s feeling particularly alone, he pops in an ear bud that connects him to his pocket-sized computer, either for anonymous cybersex or room-sized, holographic video games. His only real friend, Amy (Amy Adams), designs games and is at work on a documentary about dreams—it’s nothing more than footage of her mother sleeping for hours on end. These characters are defined by technology, which separates them from much of their humanity. Theodore avoids new connections. He doesn’t want to experience “lesser versions” of what he’s already felt before.

Then along comes Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the latest, state-of-the art operating system. She’s sentient, a fully formed AI that seems more thrilled with being alive than many of the actual humans around her. When she becomes an essential part of Theodore’s existence, the lovelorn nerd finds that the heart wants what the heart wants, even when one of those hearts is made of ones and zeros.

Jonze is playing with some contemporary themes here, particularly the techno-isolation for which we seem to volunteer. Whether we want to meet new people, fall in love, stay in touch with friends and relatives, or learn more about the world around us, there’s an app for that. Theodore is a creature of that world, emotionally hobbled, socially awkward, and unable to commit to anything new that isn’t a device. But with Samantha, all of that changes. With “Her,” Jonze manages the feat of creating a palpable, warm, even giddy love story while maintaining a dystopian gravity that grounds the film—and fuels the heartbreaking denouement that affirms love’s ultimate frailty.

Phoenix amazes as Theodore. His face is a constant ripple of emotions—aided by his killer porn ’stache—that only gives away a slice of the roiling conflict beneath the surface. It’s a detailed and nuanced performance, delivered with all the deliberation of an actor like Jack Nance. You can see he’s considered every element.

This is the part of a lifetime for Scarlett Johansson. I don’t know if anyone has ever been nominated by the Academy for a role in which they are never physically seen, but this time might be the first. Her Samantha is sexy, funny, vivacious, pretty. Hers is a complicated character, and Johansson delivers in ways she hasn’t before.

While I’m still bowled over by the visceral assault that is “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Her” is nearly the best film of 2013. It might take 2014, too.