O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (director/writer: Ethan and Joel Coen; screenwriter: based on "The Odyssey" by Homer; cinematographer: Roger Deakins; editors: Roderick Jaynes/Tricia Cooke; cast: George Clooney (Ulysses Everett McGill), John Turturro (Pete), Tim Blake Nelson (Delmar), John Goodman (Big Dan), Holly Hunter (Penny), Chris Thomas King (Tommy Johnson), Charles Durning (Pappy O'Daniel), Ray McKinnon (Vernon Waldrip), Wayne Duvall (Homer Stokes), Daniel Von Bargen (Sheriff Cooley), Stephen Root (Radio Station Man), Michael Badalucco (George Nelson), Frank Collison (Wash Hogwallop), Del Pentecost (Junior O'Daniel); Runtime: 106; Universal/Touchstone Pictures; 2000)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The Coen brothers have based their latest film on `The Odyssey' by Homer. Naturally, coming from them, it is a very loose interpretation of that Greek classic. Comedy-and-old-fashioned bluegrass and gospel music are what prevails, what gets left behind is the serious poetry of that epic work. The film is closer to Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels than it is to Homer. This film even gets its title from the part in Sullivan's Travels when Joel McCrea, playing a successful director, wants to stop doing comedy to make instead a serious socially conscious drama called `O Brother, Where Art Thou?'
The scene is set in Mississippi during the height of the Great Depression, where three chain gang convicts escape while chained together. Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) loves to talk fancy and vainly thinks he's a smart one, and by the process of elimination, he's the self-proclaimed leader (Ulysses is Roman for Odysseus). Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) are dolts and perfect foils for Ulysses. Pete is easily made a fool of by those who can't resist how gullible he is and Delmar talks incessantly about getting back his farm before he can talk about a woman or anything else. The three of them collectively being dumb-and-dumber-and-dumbest.
The film will display moments of visual splendor and a riot of comedy coming about through the characterization of the three stooge-like convicts, but overall the film flags in its effort to make the story more worthy than a few skits that work.
Since they are chained together, in order to get them all to want to escape with him, Ulysses makes up a story that he knows where $1.2 million is buried from an armed robbery he committed, which the three of them call a treasure.
After their escape, they ride away from the nearby prison with a blind black man (Homer's prophet) driving a railway handcar, who warns them that they will find treasure out there, but not the treasure they're seeking.
Seeking shelter with a kin of Pete's, the three are turned in by him to the sheriff (von Bargen), as he explains these are hard times and I could use the reward money. But the trio escapes as the place burns down and the turncoat's kid drives them out of there. The trio will proceed to get into one adventure after another, as two of them are all excited about going after the treasure, while Ulysses is more concerned with tracking down some pomade called Dapper Dan, which makes him smell pretty and look the way Clark Gable did as a matinee idol. The man with seven daughters real reason for escaping, is to stop his wife Penny (Homer's Penelope namesake-Holly Hunter) from marrying a wormy politician (McKinnon).
On a desrted road, they give a ride to a young black musician, Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King), who says he just sold his soul to the devil so he could be a great musician, and they decide to go with him into a rural radio station/recording studio, where they tell the blind radio manager (Root) that they are a group called the Soggy Bottom Boys. They cut a catchy country tune and are paid ten bucks each, but tell the manager there are five of them. They then take off again and are unaware that the record becomes an enormous smash, with customers requesting the album that the store owners tell them is all sold out.
On the road again, the three hitchhikers thumb a ride with the excitable George "Baby Face" Nelson," who is being pursued by the police, with him firing his Tommy gun from the side of the car at them with tremendous glee, while also taking time out to kill a cow. After robbing a bank with him, he deserts them because he feels depressed. Yet, he leaves them the money from the robbery.
The adventures continue, as the boys are lured into the woods by a trio of sweet-voiced sirens, and when they wake up the next morning, Pete is gone. Delmar mistakes the toad in Pete's overalls for Pete. So he carries the toad around in a shoebox until a one-eyed Bible salesman (John Goodman as the Cyclops) squeezes the critter to death after beating the two over the head and stealing their bank money.
The boys run into a heated governor's race that pits the unpopular incumbent Pappy O'Daniel (Charles Durning) against a fire-brand reform candidate (Wayne Duvall) whose motto, `Friend of the Little Man,' is endorsed by a broom-sweeping midget who accompanies him on his campaign stops.
The major skit in the film, is a wonderfully choreographed Ku Klux Klan rally that is disrupted by the boys in a comical fashion. The film reaches its climactic moment, when they sing in disguise at a political rally and get recognized with a standing ovation by the audience as the Soggy Bottom Boys. Durning comes to their rescue from his KKK opponent, who snarls at the band for being integrated. Durning goes onstage with them and pardons them for their past sins, as he is grateful that his political career has been reinvigorated by his association with the popular singers.
The story seemed to die when it tried to conclude in some sane way, as the film was played mostly for the comedy, so the story had no emotional impact or little complexity to it, even though it lightly touched on racial and religious issues. There were also several obvious references to Homer's epic, but mostly it was a film carried by the comedy performances of the three dimwitted characters, with George Clooney showing he had an old-fashioned charm, much like the old Hollywood stars, plus he has a good ear for comedy, and showed that he could carry a film.
Dan Tyminski did the singing for Clooney in the pic, as the trio sang the fictional hit "Man of Constant Sorrow."
I was somewhat disappointed by this big mess of a film (trying to depict the Depression-era in the Deep South as in the midst of great social changes due to anything from its music to the TVA--with comedy being prescribed as a the cureall for everything). It was amusing and fun to watch, but could never get over its limitation -- a weak storyline.
REVIEWED ON 3/5/2001 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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