*** (out of ****)
Starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Charles Durning, Stephen Root, Michael Badalucco, and Holly Hunter.
Directed by Joel Coen & written by Joel & Ethan Coen, from “The Odyssey” by Homer.
2000 PG13
The Coen Brothers’ “O Brother Where Art Thou?” is a delightfully goofy tour of a Depression era South that never was. To be certain, it looks a lot like the real South, especially in Roger Deakins’ simultaneously washed-out and lush cinematography. Rich in bluegrass it certainly sounds like the South, with one of the most exuberant and refreshing adapted soundtracks since the Joplin-heavy “The Sting” (1973). But it’s an exaggeration, in which all the yokels are slack-jawed and toothless, the mountain people all sing beautifully, and the politicians are all immense and corrupt. Through this wild world three convicts (George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson) are on the run, looking for buried treasure.
The movie’s credits attribute the story to Homer’s “The Odyssey,” which even its most ardent admirers must admit is basically just Odysseus running from one problem to another. “O Brother” follows that same pattern, as the convicts run into fire-crazy lawmen, a deceptive Bible salesman (John Goodman), half-naked beauties singing a siren song, a gangster on the run (Michael Badalucco), a Klan meeting that is both ominous and asinine, and a fortune-telling blind man, just to name a few. Clooney, playing Ulysses, by virtue of his arrogance and constant statements of his intelligence, is the leader of the three convicts, and is a pompous blowhard in constant search of “Dapper Dan” hair oil. He believes in progress and human intelligence, not the country faith of those around him. Turturro is cranky and skeptical of Clooney’s prowess, and Nelson is an open-faced, good-natured yokel, running amok with his mouth open most of the time. Nelson believes everyone and everything, and when he finds Turturro’s empty clothes lying out like Turturro should be in them, but only finds a frog inside, he naturally assumes that, by some magic, his friend has been turned into a toad. The interactions of the three men follow the rules of Coen movies, in which profundity and stupidity go hand and hand. Along the way, when the convicts aren’t being betrayed by salesmen or cousins, they receive a stroke of good luck in pretending to be a bluegrass group named the Soggy Bottom Boys, and record a hit.
What’s the point of all this, I wonder? As a weird, almost Monty Python-style adventure, in which three likable dimwits scurry cartoonishly from one tangle to another, “O Brother” functions successfully, but is there more? The movie is, like many Coen movies, both mocking and admiring its subjects. “Fargo” (1996) seems at first glance to be ridiculing the goofy-talkers of Minnesota, but we come to realize it is actually praising their down-home resolution to stave off the forces of evil. “O Brother” may poke fun at the Soggy Bottom Boys, but when it shows us the simple, powerful faith of its yokels, and when we hear Clooney’s prayer near the end, we start to wonder what we may have lost in our quest for irony and technology.
Finished May 18, 2002
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night