Oscar for an Oscar? - Interview with Oscar Isaac

Oscar Isaac was born in his mother’s homeland of Guatemala. The middle of three children, his father was a Cubanborn, music-loving doctor who moved around various southern US states before the family settled in Miami when Isaac was a child. Growing up in a household where Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix were constantly played, Isaac developed a deep appreciation for music, performing in several punk bands as a teenager. His love of cinema also grew during his teens; his bedroom walls papered in posters of Coen Brothers’ movies. Now, he’s starring in one.

Not that success came quickly to Isaac, who despite his great talents and a degree from Julliard, had been stuck in supporting parts for a few years. But the low profile of the roles never stopped him from upstaging his co-stars, appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s Che alongside Benicio Del Toro; bringing a terrifying menace to Prince John in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and holding his own against Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling in the superb Drive.

“The Coens took a chance on me,” remarks Isaac about his long-held supporting star status. "At the same time, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I had a chance to learn how to act, and to be able to take wildly different chances, play vastly different characters. I was doing it to get better as opposed to receiving the attention to be the next superhero in a movie, or whatever. So for me, it played out in exactly the way that it needed to. I’m so happy that I had the chance to practice a little bit before.”

Practice paid off: Isaac’s performance in the meditative drama Inside Llewyn Davis is essentially flawless. Playing a self-destructive musician – loosely based on real-life folk figure Dave Van Ronk – whose soulfulness is only revealed when he sings, the film is a love letter to both lost souls and the ’60s New York folk scene. It was an era Isaac happily threw himself into.

“There’s definitely a moment early on when you’re trying to bridge the gulf between yourself and the character. You try to fire up the imagination. It’s not an academic thing of like, ‘Woah, now I need to research the time!”. It’s about what’s going to spark the imagination. So, reading about Greenwich Village in 1961 is one thing. But getting uber-into a Charles Bukowski poem is just as crucial. To ground me in the time, I read Mayor Of MacDougal Street, Dave Van Ronk’s memoir and Chronicle, Dylan’s memoir. I spoke to people that were playing around at that time. I even opened up for one of them at different little clubs in the Village, to immerse myself.”

Isaac also personally connected to Llewyn, in his struggle to maintain his creative integrity in the face of commercialism.

“I found it to be a beautiful portrait of a struggling artist. I loved the ‘shape’ of it: the structure of the movie is that of a folk song.”

Llewyn is an unusual central character: though talented, often bitingly funny, he’s hardly likeable. A serial womaniser with the local abortionist on speed dial, Llewyn betrays his friends, is condescending towards their music and never tries to win anyone over – except when he sings. We are living through the golden age of the television anti-hero, of moral blank-spots such as Don Draper and Walter White. But cinema has not yet caught the anti-hero bug. In that context Llewyn Davis is very much an exception. Isaac suspects cynical business imperatives may continue to render such characters an anathema to Hollywood.

“It’s difficult to separate the business aspect of it. Hollywood is very much concerned with the bottom line. I guess that’s why we’re conditioned to feel that, in movies, characters are supposed to be so likeable. The first question is often, ‘How sympathetic or how likeable is the protagonist?’ I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talk about a character in a play that way. It’s a strange thing. I appreciate the Coens don’t know why that is either. And really, they don’t care. The flaws are what make people interesting.”