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 The
South has a special place in the American psyche. Not the specific
south of modern cities and industry, but the legendary South of narrow
lanes and mysterious bayous. The South of O'Neill and Williams, of
Capote and Harper Lee. It's a gothic place full of strange characters
who live outside the rules of our world in rambling ante-bellum mansions
or tumbledown shacks dripping with Spanish moss. It is a place of
legend and mythology, and a more than appropriate venue for a retelling
of the granddaddy of all mythological tales, The Odyssey.
With O
Brother Where Art Thou, the Coen brothers bring together a collection
of characters that would make the old Greek poet proud. But don't
think this is some slavish reinterpretation of a literary classic;
they still have plenty of time to take the odd potshot at other
archetypes of southern legend and lore. And all with their trademark
wit and humor.
Ulysses Everett
McGill (George Clooney) has just escaped from a chain gang along
with the two men who shared his particular length of iron: a shifty
criminal called Pete (John Turturro), and the blissfully dim Delmar
(Tim Blake Nelson). Actually, calling him dim is a bit unfair as
the three of them working together would have a hard time figuring
out how to operate a roller skate. McGill is certainly the brightest
of the bunch however, and it his robbery haul that the three are
out to recover before its hiding place is drowned forever at the
bottom of a reservoir.
They haven't
gone very far before they meet a blind philosopher (Lee Weaver,
a dead ringer for the ancient bust of Homer that's in all the books)
who tells them that their journey will be long and they will see
many wondrous things. Pete is worried by this, but the ebullient,
perpetually optimistic McGill waves his concerns aside. Of course,
the old man was right and the men do have many adventures, from
the Homeric: meeting the Cyclops in the awe-inspiring form of a
one-eyed Bible salesman (played with gusto by John Goodman); to
the merely legendary: picking up black guitarist Thomas Johnson
(bluesman, Chris Thomas King) at the crossroads where, like his
namesake, Robert, he has just sold his soul to the devil in return
for the ability to play the guitar. Of all the references to the
old story, however, none is as effective as the meeting with the
Sirens, three pulchritudinous women, washing clothes in the river
while wearing…well, not very much, and singing in a steady
rhythm to the pounding of the laundry on the rocks. The slack jawed
response of our heroes is completely understandable. Eventually
their adventures get them to the little town of Ithaca where McGill's
wife, Penny (Holly Hunter) is waiting, though not with quite the
patient chastity of her namesake.
The casting
is, as always, a nimble combination of the tried and true and the
new. Familiar faces like John Goodman, Holly Hunter and Charles
Durning turn in fine performances, while less familiar actors populate
the landscape with a leering variety worthy of Hogarth. But it is
George Clooney who gets his best role to date. His McGill, with
his idiot optimism, and decorative vocabulary, harks back to the
swashbuckling heroes of yesteryear, to the swagger of early Clark
Gable and Errol Flynn, with more than a touch of Joel McCrea's naïve
Sullivan of Sullivan's Travels, which is of course where
the film gets both its inspiration and its name (O Brother Where
Art Thou is the socially relevant movie that McCrea's character
wants to make in Sullivan's Travels), as well as a few of
its events (the kid driving the old Ford). Clooney grins and preens
and always has a plan, the leader of his little group of adventurers
as they chase their treasure while trying to avoid a fate worse
than death at the hands of their own Poseidon, a mysterious lawman
by the name of Cooley.
As if this
weren't enough there is also the music, a catalog of what one character
refers to as "that good old timey music." It is the music of America's
past, when people still created most of it themselves and when a
hit was a record that got played "as far away as Mobile." As intrinsic
to the telling of the story as the characters themselves, the music
takes us into a time and place where things moved more slowly and
with a deliberate swing that is marvelous to hear and behold.
It is this
attention to detail that has always made the Coen brothers' films
fascinating from Blood Simple through to Fargo. It's
not just the casting choices, or the depth of the characters, but
all the little things that combine to get in the way. From the hair
pomade to the recording studio to the local election, this world
is fully peopled and everyone is on their own adventure.
O Brother
Where Art Thou is the kind of film that is so dense in detail
that it will take repeated viewings to fully appreciate all the
references, but don't let this put you off - it's also very funny,
and pokes fun at itself even as it careens towards its treasure
shack. Clooney, Turturro and Nelson are hysterical as the bickering
trio, and dumb as they are, it's a pleasure to go with them and
even more fun to watch them try to make sense out of the whole thing.
This movie is a classic.
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