Inspired by the salty memoirs of folk musician Dave Van Ronk, a close contemporary of the young Bob Dylan, the latest film from the inventive Coen brothers examines a crazy week in the life of folkie Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) as he struggles to make it in the heady 1961 Greenwich Village folk scene.

In the past, Coen brothers films might have poked fun at such a sincere hero, but Davis’s commitment and talent are taken at full face value, with Isaac singing his own parts beautifully, as do Carey Mulligan as his romantic ex and Justin Timberlake as her new singing partner.

At its heart, this is a rags to rags story, focusing on what it must feel like to be (and here one has to paraphrase Dylan) on your own. Not just a complete unknown, but sleeping on floors, always hard up and utterly desperate to catch even a modest-sized break in what is an essentially deaf and uncomprehending music world.

That’s the path of every young performer who ever set out to make it to the top in the big city, and the Coens capture the uncertainty of the vicarious fame-game more vividly than any film I’ve ever seen.

The New...