We all know a Llweyn Davis. We've all been Llweyn Davis. This is a film that, though absolutely more than stellar in other respects, lives and breathes on the characterization and performance of its lead. The story is immaculately crafted, chronicling a loop of tragic mediocrity. There's some beautiful camerawork, particularly during the final song that perfectly conveys Llweyn's woeful goodbye. Other cast members like the perfectly obnoxious Goodman, the scene stealing Driver, and especially Carey Mulligan as Jean in a performance that could carry its own movie, do a wonderful job. But without a thoughtful and well-sketched portrait of a character and the acting to fill it, the film would fall apart. Luckily, the film has those in spades.

Oscar Isaacs is enthralling. The long looks of ennui out the car window as the weight of toiling in the same circle settles in. The crack in his voice as he thanks his truest yet most vitriolic friend for trying to give him one more shot. The exhaustion, the grief, the bitterness towards others and himself. I've felt all of those things, and Isaacs reflected them back at me. He's charming and earnest enough to help you understand why people keep letting him in, and obnoxious and misanthropic enough to feel just as furious as they do. He'll snap and lash out and feel genuinely awful about it, he will own it. But he will not and cannot change; next week he'll do it all again. He'll always be back where he started. It's so easy to go inside Llewyn Davis because we've all been him, and I wouldn't mind going inside this film again.