Oscar Isaac was born in
Guatemala and raised in Florida. Aside from his acting career, he’s also played
music since he was a kid, slipping from one genre to another, driven by innate
curiosity. He’s already amassed numerous credits but his role as the eponymous
struggling folk singer in Inside Llewyn
Davis marks a major breakthrough, both in terms of creative challenges and
visibility. Isaac’s had a busy year promoting the film since its Cannes
premiere, but he managed to spare some time to answer a few questions over the phone last
week.
JB: Did the folk revival of
the early ’60s hold any special meaning for you?
OI: I grew up listening to
Dylan, but I wasn’t terribly aware of the pre-Dylan folk scene. The repertoire
was unknown to me, but since getting involved in this project I’ve become
hugely affected by it.
JB: Dave Van Ronk was a key
inspiration for Inside Llewyn Davis,
but I don’t know whether his life or music was something you turned to when
preparing.
OI: When you’re starting out
you grab on to anything that might help, so I did spend a lot of time with his
legacy. I found everything he recorded and really latched onto his style of
playing.
JB: Something I find
fascinating about the film is the dissonance between Llewyn Davis the bewitching
performer and Llewyn Davis the guy just trying to find a decent winter coat.
Did you sense that dissonance while singing those songs? Did it require you to
go to a different place than the one you inhabit in the rest of the film?
OI: Yeah. It’s incredibly
intimate. Just one dude and a guitar in front of people, playing these songs.
He’s generally disconnected, an island unto himself, so when he plays these
songs they become windows into his soul. It was very important that these
musical performances were not expressive so much as revealing. The key to doing
that was to play as though I was just playing for myself, like I was just
sitting on my couch, alone. Don’t put anything on them. Don’t try to squeeze
anything out.
JB: We really come to know
Llewyn in some substantial way, yet the character so often avoids sharing
anything, even when confronted with what we gradually learn was a recent and
devastating loss. The only scene where she speaks at all openly about this loss is during the road trip to Chicago, when talking to someone he couldn't care less about.
OI: When you’re going through
hardship you do everything to avoid it. He’s no different. If you think of this
as a story of grief you can kind of track the stages. You hear him play this
record from his past in solitude, then he plays the same song at the midpoint
and it makes him angry, then he plays it again at the end as a dirge. There’s a
process in there of letting go.
JB: There’s also something
about a guy channelling grief through songs that aren’t his. They can engage
his emotions without being his own words, without sounding like overt
confessions.
OI: The preservationist in
him looks to the past for songs that seem relevant in the now. They speak to
his personal experience but also to something bigger, something in the air.
JB: A continual source of
dark humour in the film is Llewyn’s inability to move his career forward.
You’ve obviously had more luck in that department, but I wonder if you can
relate to his frustrations.
OI: Definitely. I constantly
ask myself why I’m doing what I’m doing. The reason is usually to get back to
initial impulse that made me want to do it in the first place, that search for
creative joy. But you get old and further along and that search slaps up
against the ordinary bullshit of existence. That’s when you can lose your way. There’s also the frustration of having
something to express but not having the platform to express it through. No
one’s willing to listen. It takes perseverance. But, if you consider everything
that happens to him, that’s one thing that Llewyn is arguably not lacking.
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