O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Jokey to a point, Joe and Ethan Coen’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” released in 2000, tells Homer’s Odyssey and the Bible to no specific point. Peter Canavese said in his review, “The Coen Brothers do weave political and religious satire into their comic tapestry, but mostly they use their kinda-update of The Odyssey (updating only so far as the 1930s, mind you) as a clothesline for hillbilly jokes and roots music. T-Bone Burnett's musical supervision enriches the film immeasurably, elevating it from what the Coens have half-jokingly referred to as their "Ma and Pa Kettle" movie (or "the Lawrence of Arabia of hayseed movies") into something approaching a modern movie musical.”

In a completely hilarious performance that’s aging well, George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, the de facto “genius” of three escaped prisoners from a 1937 chain gang. With Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) with him, Ulysses must take the long journey home to his wife Penny (Holly Hunter, hilariously the opposite of an understanding wife). The similarity to Homer is right there, despite being wide as the comedy: along the way, the “man of twists and turns” meets supernatural advice, distractions and obstacles including a “Blind Seer” (Lee Weaver), a trio of Sirens (Mia Tate, Musetta Vander and Christy Taylor), a “cyclops” (John Goodman’s giant Bible salesman Daniel “Big Dan” Teague), and a variety of other beasts (politicians and the Klan, not equally limited) on the way to encounter, rather anticlimactically, enemy suitor Vernon T. Waldrip (Ray McKinnon).

Canavese noted, “The film's most memorable setpiece finds the trio of antiheroes lighting upon a surreal Klan rally simultaneously redolent of The Wizard of Oz's "March of the Winkies," a mass-synchronized Busby Berkeley number, and a Nazi rally; it's at once a bit scary and a lot funny, an effect enhanced by the revelation that the apparently progressive gubernatorial candidate—running on an anti-corruption platform—spits away from the head of the racist class. But the picaresque comedy is hit and miss, the horrors and delights of the Coens' random universe having little to no lasting emotional impact on their little-man heroes.”

Canavese continued, “Given that, one wishes the movie were funnier and a bit less discomfiting in its oh-so-smart superiority to dimwitted characters; to be fair, the idiots who have heart do get sympathetic credit for it.” Mostly, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is a mixture of literary, cinematic, musical and historical references (the title refers to the not-watched movie in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels), cameos from Coen regulars (Michael Badalucco as George “Babyface” Nelson, Charles Durning as a strongly resourceful, high-climbing politician), and lively musical numbers, like “Man of Constant Sorrow,” a fictional and (fortuitously) actual hit song. Canavese ended his review by saying, “One thing is certain: even with its mock-pretentious parallelism to The Odyssey—calculatedly undercut even further by the Coens' later insistence that they never read Homer's epic—O Brother, Where Art Thou? refuses to take itself seriously, which is both its principal failing and its charm.”

This is another one of those movies that is a must see by everyone. I have only known parts of The Odyssey, and this movie did a great inspiration of the play. As a Classical Mythology minor in College, I thoroughly found myself enjoying this and would say it’s another one of my favorite films. Definitely see it if you haven’t.

Alright everyone, there is a movie that I’m thinking of checking out tonight. If I don’t get to see it, then wait next week for the continuation of “Coen Brothers Month.”