Headlines

Ten Days Of The Coen Brothers: Day Six Part Two

Published

10 years ago

March 3, 2016

Admin

Southern Gothic

♦ With the release of Hail, Caesar! in the UK on 4 March, Tripwire kicks off a look at all of the Coen Brothers films released to date. Yesterday we took a look at their seventh film The Big Lebowski (1998) and now our editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at their eighth movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Director: Joel Coen

Stars: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter

We are about halfway through the Coen Brothers’ canon and we come to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a darkly comedic piece set in the 1930s deep south about three escaped convicts searching for a buried treasure, pursued by a lawman determined to see them meet the end of the hangman’s noose. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is classic Coen Brothers territory: loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey and Preston Sturges’s movie Sullivan Travels, it mixes light comedy with a more fabulous streak. As a nod to The Odyssey, two of the trio encounter a modern-day cyclops, the malicious and ingeniously named Dan T (John Goodman once again) who takes advantage of them by physically attacking and robbing Everett (George Clooney) and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson), leaving them injured under a tree. In another scene, the threesome meet three modern-day sirens washing suggestively in a river, causing the evocatively named Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) to become separated from the other two.

The script is very strong with some inventive characters and diverting sequences but the film is lifted by the use of music here. The bluegrass and old-fashioned blues that runs throughout, is cleverly incorporated by the Coens into the plot itself – notably when the escaped criminals, who have been joined by black bluesman Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King), masquerade as a black singing group to earn $10 a piece from a blind radio station owner. Johnson himself is a nod to famous blues guitarist Robert Johnson, who is supposed to have made a deal with the devil waiting at the crossroads where the trio find him.

Serious subjects are tackled here too as the trio run foul of the Ku Klux Klan and politician Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall), who is running to replace Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning) as governor of the state of Mississippi.

There is a wonderfully dreamlike quality to much of what the convicts encounter and yet again, thanks to some very canny cameos, like the brilliant Goodman, who is electrifying on screen, and Daniel van Bargen (Sheriff Cooley), who pursues them like a monster from the depths. It feels like real thought and affection has gone into the making of this film. Clooney is at his likeable best here as the dandified Everett, and solid support comes from Blake Nelson and Turturro, both playing craggy yet benevolent southern hicks. There is real chemistry between the threesome, which helps a great deal to engage the audience.

The look of the film, thanks to regular Coen visualists director of photography Roger Deakins and production designer Dennis Gassner, creates layer upon layer of symbolism and Southern ambience.

Although it is not as well-realised as its immediate predecessor The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a finely-crafted piece of cinema that manages to cast one eye back to the past while firmly keeping the other on the present. It is a film that connects with the audience while never outstaying its welcome onscreen.

JOEL MEADOWS