A Movie That Wants No Introduction (So Right here You Go Anyway)
Launched twenty-five years in the past final month, Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, The place Artwork Thou? has since change into one thing of a cult traditional.
Lauded by critics for its soundtrack—which launched a bluegrass revival—and its groundbreaking strategy to paint enhancing, the factor is in any other case primarily Coen: lovable freaks, surprisingly arresting digicam pictures, astute social commentary packaged in razor-sharp comedic dialogue.
Set in Despair-era Mississippi, the movie follows Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) and his two sidekicks, Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). The trio—escaped convicts first chained collectively on a jail work crew—journey throughout the state in search of a treasure that Everett has apparently hidden beneath his household abode. The stakes are raised, in fact, by the truth that the native authorities have deliberate to flood the valley the place mentioned residence sits—the clock is a’tickin’.
Beset by untrue lovers (and treacherous cousins), hounded by a very sinister consultant of the state (with smoked-out spectacles, no much less), making near-constant run-ins with the regulation, with native lawbreakers, with KKK rallies, with sirens and cyclops, and with (maybe worst of all) the gubernatorial campaigns of native politicians—the three have their work reduce out for them if they’re to outlive the lengthy journey residence.
However their return is rarely really doubtful—it’s been foretold. A prophet (within the type of a blind man driving a manually-powered railroad cart) tells them how the journey goes to go, proper from the soar:
You search an important fortune, you three who are actually in chains. You’ll find a fortune, although it is not going to be the one you search. However first… first you will need to journey an extended and tough highway, a highway fraught with peril. Mm-hmm. You shall see thangs, fantastic to inform. You shall see a… a cow… on the roof of a cotton home, ha. And, oh, so many startlements. I can’t inform you how lengthy this highway shall be, however concern not the obstacles in your path, for destiny has vouchsafed your reward. Although the highway could wind, yea, your hearts develop weary, nonetheless shall ye comply with them, even unto your salvation.
Like all nice prophecies: simply vaguely particular sufficient to make issues fascinating.
Converse, Reminiscence!
Did that abstract sound surprisingly acquainted?
In case you are an individual of fine film style, you’ve seen it, so it had higher. In case you are an individual of fine e book style (or simply somebody who grew up wherever apart from a desert island), it must be acquainted to you as effectively. That’s as a result of the movie is predicated on Homer’s Odyssey, one of many foundational texts of civilization (and of any literature class value its salt). And now that I consider it, even in case you had been born on a desert island, it’s in all probability acquainted to you too. In spite of everything, Odysseus did go to a variety of these.
For what it’s value, in case you haven’t learn the e book (errr… poem), neither had the filmmakers: Ethan and Joel primarily based the the factor on a comedian e book model of Homer’s epic. But it surely should’ve been a fairly good comedian e book, as a result of Homeric tones ring all through the movie nonetheless.
Susceptible to insulting my readership, I’ll lay a number of of them out for you.
Prologue
The movie begins with Homer’s invocation of the muse, a transfer that may get my classically educated arse feeling some unusual mixture of sentimental and able to cost the armies of Troy (which appears to be the close to fixed psychological state of Odysseus within the poem, so I’m in good firm) very quickly flat.
O Muse!
Sing in me, and thru me inform the story
Of that man expert in all of the methods of contending,
A wanderer, harried for years on finish…
It leaves off the ultimate traces—traces which I discover necessary—however I prefer to assume that it does so not out of ignorance however out of a type of self-deprecating subtlety: “Converse! And inform the story once more in our time.”
That is, in fact, precisely what the movie seeks to do.
Tiresius
The entire blind prophet factor we mentioned earlier is a parallel that’s (foregoing doubtlessly offensive jokes) onerous to overlook. There are some fascinating resonances between what the OG Tiresias tells Odysseus and what his railroading (using?) counterpart tells Everett.
Tiresius, wanting into the longer term, says, profoundly, “I see a person who will get to make it residence alive, nevertheless it’s now not you.”
The discover a fortune, although it is not going to be the one you search bit within the film appears to be a transparent nod to this. And the road that follows might primarily be a translation of the unique: “However first… first you will need to journey—an extended and tough highway, a highway fraught with peril. You shall see issues, fantastic to inform.”
The one factor that’s decidedly not within the unique is the “cow on the roof of a cotton home.” Looks like an odd addition. To cite Jerry Seinfeld, “What’s the deal?”
Properly, expensive reader, stick with me. I’ll get to that.
Ulysses
And talking of Everett, I understand that I ought to, prone to additional insulting my readers, clarify the title. George Clooney’s character known as Everett all through the course of the movie, however we catch his full authorities title—Ulysses Everett McGill—anytime he’s giving a usually formal and verbose introduction of himself to numerous facet characters.
The title Ulysses is the Romanized model of Odyssesus, as we see in each Dante’s Inferno and Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”—each of which reduce distinctly totally different characters than the Ody that Homer drew up initially (however don’t get me began).
The Coens’ Ulysses does match his namesake, no less than in all of the ways in which rely. Most significantly, he’s a person of wit. The one-liners listed below are too many to checklist—as evidenced by this bearded man on TikTok promoting Etsy stickers of them.
All that to say, we have now our wanderer, expert in all of the methods of contending. And whereas I’m right here, I’m simply gonna say that that is one in every of Clooney’s finest roles, if not his very finest. The wise-cracking, hair-gel-hawking, unnecessarily verbose Outdated Hollywood Main Man is the type of position ol’ George was simply born to play.
The Sirens
In one of many movie’s best-executed scenes, the three misfits are pulled off target by the tune and fantastic thing about three maidens bathing within the river. This results in the disappearance of Pete and to Delmar’s assumption that he has been bewitched. When their paths finally cross once more, the latter is slack-jawed at his buddy’s obvious resurrection: “WE THOUGHT YOU WAS A TOOOOAADD.”
The Cyclops
That is maybe my favourite of the movie’s Homeric nods. In case you are attempting to transpose the Odyssey into the Despair-era American south, what the Hades do you do with the cyclops?
When you’re Joel and Ethan Coen, the reply is apparent: Flip him right into a one-eyed Bible salesman who beats the crap out of the boys at a picnic.
Penny and the Jets
First off, I apologize for that title. I’ve no excuse. It’s simply the best way I’m.
However Ulysses’ spouse, Penny (Holly Hunter), is, in fact, Penelope. And the group that I’ve named The Jets can be (by no logical or linguistic connection in any way) the suitors.
Besides within the movie, there’s solely one suitor (Vernon T. Waldrip). However he’s gained Penny’s coronary heart. And he’s almost gained the election for gubernatorial candidate Homer Stokes, for whom he serves as marketing campaign supervisor. And he’s bona fide.
The Return
Like Odysseus of previous, Everett can’t count on to only win again his spouse by getting residence and quoting John Wick. As a substitute, like the unique Odysseus, he should show himself.
However whereas for Odysseus, proving appeared like stringing bows and really going John Wick mode on the suitors, for Everett, it seems to be a bit totally different.
There are nonetheless strings concerned. And bows. But it surely as a substitute seems to be like his spouse realizing that her husband is, in actual fact, the lead-singer on the most popular old-timey music radio hit within the state of Mississippi.
And it seems to be like us, the viewers, realizing that we have now been gifted with what is probably going the best bluegrass monitor to ever come out of a preferred movie.
Extra Issues In Heaven and Earth
The movie already boasts a formidable multitask in being each a rollicking work of comedy and a considerate reimagining of maybe essentially the most most elementary story of Western Civilization. However the Coens couldn’t cease there. They needed to go for the hat-trick. The third aim of mentioned hat-trick being, in fact, a scathing critique of contemporary rationalism and a profound reflection on religion. Like most comedies, O Brother is, at backside, a movie of nice religion.
Essentially the most ingenious piece of this film lies within the Coens’ choice to script the crafty Ulysses not solely as a witty mind however as an mental rationalist. The very first thing this does is create myriad alternatives for witty dialogue. Everett is what occurs once you take Rene Descartes, give him a southern accent and a humorousness, and stick him proper within the buckle of the Bible belt. Simply after Pete and Delmar be part of a bunch baptism (in a SPELLBINDING scene, sonically and cinematically), they decide up the hitchhiking guitar participant Tommy Johnson, who claims he has offered his soul to the satan in alternate for talent on the strings. Everett quips: “Properly, ain’t it a small world, spiritually talking? Pete and Delmar simply been baptized and saved. I assume I’m the one one that continues to be unaffiliated!”
However past alternatives for comedian incongruity, Everett’s character permits the movie to wrestle deeply (although by no means ham-handedly) with the very actual problems with a world that no less than seems to imply extra to us as human beings than mere materials and arithmetic. It broaches discussions of disenchantment and re-enchantment which might be maybe extra related immediately than when the movie was launched a quarter-century in the past.
All through the movie, Everett balks at what he sees because the uneducated non secular mumbo-jumbo round him. However because the journey goes on, as unusual and stranger issues befall the protagonists, the viewer can see that the veneer of pure rationalism is a skinny one certainly. When it seems to be, to all accounts, as if Pete’s beating coronary heart lays beneath his shirt, shriveled up by the magic of the sirens, Delmar will not be the one one with a glance of spiritual concern on his face.
This involves its zenith within the movie’s climactic scene:
Returning to Everett’s farm, to not discover the treasure they sought, however to retrieve his marriage ceremony ring, they’re met by the bespectacled lawman who has dogged their path all alongside. He has ready nooses, graves—and even a haunting troupe of gravedigging singers.
“However we’s been pardoned! They introduced it on the radio!” the three protest. The policeman replies with haunting simplicity: “We don’t have a radio.”
Confronted with the approaching actuality of loss of life, Everett places up an earnest prayer for salvation. There aren’t any atheists in foxholes.
And, like clockwork, the deus ex-es the machina. Floodwaters come streaming down that engulf each the simply and the unjust in a torrent of family furnishings and Dapper Dan pomade. Safely afloat a coffin Moby-Dick model, Delmar makes an attempt to level out to Everett that his prayer labored.
However on the opposite facet of peril, Everett is again to rationalizing. The valley was, in fact, already scheduled to be flooded by native bureaucrats. It’s not God, however trendy expertise that has saved them. Everett smugly concludes, “Yessir, we’re gonna have us a veritable age of purpose.” However then one thing floats by which leaves each protagonist and viewer with the furrowed forehead of recall.
The opposite cow simply dropped. Reminiscence has spoken. It has all come to move, simply because the previous prophet Tiresias predicted.
The Coens’ comedian masterpiece matches comfortably into the “Christ-haunted American South” of Flannery O’Connor. It muses, alongside Hamlet, “There are extra issues in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!”
It doesn’t resolve all ambiguities however leaves viewers with a universe only a bit extra complicated—a bit extra enchanted—than earlier than they pressed the play button.
And maybe that’s the objective of movie.
