“If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song,” says Llewyn Davis, after opening the movie with a smoky rendition of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.”

By god, this film is an unapologetic folk song.

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen may have just offered their most telling of films from their self-made canon with this 60’s-set folk ballad, Inside Llewyn Davis. Like the all-too-important line as muttered above, the film’s story isn’t a new one. Heck, even the title is lifted from the 1963 folk record, Inside Dave Van Ronk, from an American folk singer who (more or less) inspired the film, and whose songs and a half benchmark the film, including the opening number’s. The story doesn’t offer any cleverness in its plot, which makes it one of the most clever films of the year. It doesn’t set out to tell you some new “original” take of a wandering troubadour, even though it’s one of the most original films of the year. Simply, you’re going to get a film of self-packaged simplicity, and may even walk out of the theater thinking, “That’s it?”

Yes. That’s it.

The Brothers’ latest writing/directing effort whittles out all the excess, whittles out all the frill, all the weight of story itself, making this film as simple and bare-bones as any of their film’s have dared to be. It’s enough of a self-aware statement to think that the Coen’s, masters of storytelling, asked themselves here, what is ‘story’? Is it something far-reaching, universally-spanning?, or is it about a vagabond who finds a cat?

Without tripping into postmodern territory, the absences of things here are what give the film its ultimate meaning. The film is comprised wholly of vignetted scenes, in which our hero Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) yields his guitar all around the Greenwich Village, climbing in and out of apartment windows for a couch to sleep on while trying to scrape together royalties from his previous musical-duo act’s record. After his partner jumps off the George Washington bridge, Davis is left as a one man band, a one-man world.

There is a sly irony here, so presently felt under the surface of it all. It’s the story of a non-story.

Llewyn Davis himself is a man guarded, defensive, and just self-serving. It’s not that he has ill-intentioned affections for anyone; it’s just that his sense of self-lost makes it that much easier for those around him to be splattered with the mess he leaves wherever he goes. He’s seen as selfish, but only through the guise of other characters’ classifications. When the hate-harboring Jean (Carey Mulligan) blasts Davis for impregnating her and for his general lack of worldly care, its seen as just another instance of a comedically karmic world coming down hard on him. Isaac as Davis is warm, and plays the humor of each situation with his good senses, making his Davis a wholly watchable and sympathetic one.

Watching this film is both a visual and audible treat in the most cinematic of senses. The lensing, washed out colors, placing of the camera, and editing, are all masterful achievements, for a ‘Cohen Brothers’ film or any. Each element is married together in such a way that the singularly specific writing and directional cues are felt in every frame of the movie. There is a real language here, and it holds your hand to lead you through the picture in such a rewarding way. And of course, with another lovingly devised score with the aid of music man T. Bone Burnett (who put bluegrass music on the pop music market with 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? hit, “Man of Constant Sorrow”), its enough to sit back and see Llewyn Davis play a full length song with minimal coverage at any point in the movie.

Again, the absence of its story is what ultimately sets this one aside from any of the Cohens’ others. Some will not care for this style, though I’d argue that this instance was flirted with in 2009’s A Serious Man. Where we saw more colorful strides in that film’s story of a man beholden to the universe’s ultimate plans, we see that same theme even further matured, further experimented, and further rewarded here. Davis certainly stands out as a much welcomed return after 2009’s so-so standard True Grit. Though it won’t wet the appetite for 2007’s sprawling Best Picture Winner fans No Country for Old Men, or even the aforementioned O Brother, Where Art Thou? In O Brother, the literary master work The Odyssey is the story’s plot; In Davis, the literary master work Ulysses is the name of a cat.

Now about that cat.

The orange furball is such a lovable part of the film. It’s certainly a must-include in all of the reviews that can accurately critique the movie. The cat that comes into his life sets the story in motion. It comes, and it goes, for Llewyn can’t take care of any living thing, let alone himself. The cat plays as influential a role as does pop-loof Jim (Justin Timberlake) or mysterious curmudgeon Roland Turner (John Goodman). The feline’s illusiveness, its penchant for slipping in and out of open windows, follows the journey, and for that matter, significance, of our own protagonist’s.

There is a sly irony here, so presently felt under the surface of it all. It’s the story of a non-story. A double sided coin that can be flipped deeming ‘importance’ or ‘non-importance,’ of ‘never-new’ and ‘never old,’ spun from any current or answer that blows in the wind. It’s a coin that should be held onto and cherished for such emotional and thematic pondering and remembrance. Or, simply, spent to catch the next bus to nowhere.