Minor Project: Potential Scene- Inside Llewyn Davis

The fourth scene I have looked it with a view to use as my final piece for this module, this comes from my current favourite film, Inside Llewyn Davis and it is a scene where two actors discuss the up coming abortion that they need to have after they may have conceived a child together, there is also some discussion about their differing lifestyle choices as well as their respective music careers. It is evident that throughout the film Jean hates Llewyn or at least she puts on that persona, though it is never clear why, In contrast, Llewyn doesn't seem to like many people and he's a very cynical, dry kind of person.

I absolutely love this scene just for the effortless wit that Llewyn has and the fact we almost can't help but love him despite the fact he's realistically not a vey good person. But this isn't by accident, the Coen Brothers and Oscar Isaac will have no doubt sat down and spent countless conversations just working out exactly how it is that Isaac should play the character in order to get this kind of charm. Meanwhile on the opposite end we have Jean who is sensible, organised, she has her life together and she is otherwise perfect other than the fact she slept with Llewyn and yet we can't help but feel like she is the villain in all of this, it seems strange to me that she would be so easily dislikable despite the fact that she represents roughly what everyone would want in life, again except the affair and abortion. This to me is what makes the scene so appealing and interesting from an academic stand point, because the portrayal of the two and the way they play off of each other is really strong and elicits a response from the audience: we feel sorry for Llewyn and angry at Jean. All of this occurs because of how the characters play their roles, Llewyn is chilled and laid back, Jean is rough and stern. This is where the emotion comes from, the audience feed off of the emotion that is being given out from the performance and react accordingly. To reference another film, Silence of the Lambs; we can't help but somehow feel aligned with Hannibal despite he's a serial killer and a cannibal, why? because he performs the character (under direction to do so of course) in a way that makes him appealing to an audience despite his physical actions. To bring this back to my piece, I am considering this scene because of the deeper emotion than just face value, the subtle reactions in each character that give away a lot about their feelings without being obvious. I mean minor details like Jean's posture and Llewyn's subtle hand movements that suggest he's not overly interested but also that he feels a little awkward. These are little things that can be directed but work so much better when they are authentic and come from the subconscious of an actor who is in the mind of their character. These little movements and tropes and what I aim to use to judge the success and failure of how I have improved the performances because I can direct movement but then it will feel like movement for the sake of movement, if it is authentic then it makes the performance much more layered and believable. The logistics of the scene aren't really an issue, I have shot in cafes before and they didn't seem to mind if I would want to again so it would be relatively easy to set the scene of a cafe meeting, on top of this, the scene is covered from mostly three static shots that alternate, therefore it will be easy to shoot as three set ups isn't really a huge drawback to filming time. The other thing to consider is the emotion in the scene, in terms of the outward emotion, there isn't an awful lot of it when compared to some of the other scene I have mentioned and as such this may make it too easy and it may potentially not be enough to push the actors to improve their performance. To quickly sum up, this scene is fantastic because of its subtle underlying emotions and subtle movements from the actors but it does fall down on its scale as it is a very basic encounter with little depth in terms of what is in the scene, when we compare this to True Romance, that scene is much more in your face and would give a clearer indication of how good the actors are. That being said this too is a strong contender because of all of the factors that it does bring to the table.