oh brother where art thou
Man...An Ancient Race
a brief history of me and coen brother movies.
i was never a big fan of the coens. was amused by blood simple as a
clever rehashing of noir. raising arizona was a cartoonish series of
gags. only caught parts of miller's crossing, most of which were
murky and confused. missed a bunch though i caught barton fink and
fargo a year ago on video. must admit both, at the very least, go
beyond prankish cleverness; perhaps, they even overreach but the
ambition is always laudable.
i've had a problem with the coens' smartalecky attitude toward movies
and the world. coen films invite the audience to share in the sense
of superiority toward a humanity misshapen into semi-retarded
caricatures. if i favor barton fink over others, it was because the
nature of the caricature gained intensity to the melting point of self
subversion. and if fargo is another film i admire, it's because the
focus was on what is caricaturish about people instead of rendering
them as caricatures. of crucial importance, much that was genuinely
human was tapped from beneath the facades.
idea movies and cornucopia movies.
there are many kinds of movies but at polar opposites, there are what
you might call the idea movie and the life movie(or cornucopia
movies). idea films mute or tone down the varied and rich
distractions of life in order to concentrate on an idea, whether
philosophical, moral, spiritual, or aesthetic. the prime example of
such practitioner was probably robert bresson, who worked spiritual
problems with the mathematician's precision and patience.
but there is another kind of movie. one that celebrates life to the
fullest and assaults the audience with a feast of sights, sounds,
smells, grostequeries, etc. yes, fellini and its greatest
practitioner today, emir kusterica. this isn't to say one form is
necessarily exclusive of the other and only a fool would suggest that
kusterica's films are without moral concerns; nor could one reasonably
say kusterica has nothing to say about social or political concerns;
'when father was away on business' is a biting commentary on the
unholy wedding of politics and personalities. still, kusterica never
shies us away from the blare and glare of life.
and then there are some directors who have tried both. richard
linklater made a cornucopia masterpiece with dazed and confused and a
idea clunker with before sunrise which was essentially lame generation
x-er dilution of a rohmer movie.
the discomforting thing about coens is they have been both--often
simultaneously-- idea and cornucopia filmmakers in equal measure. and,
that pretty much explains why i never liked them much. their
idea--based on extensive knowledge of movie history and genres--and
their vision of life--willingness to throw everything at the audience
including the kitchen sink and a newspaper-- neutralized the full
impact of either. the coens were too movie knowing to present their
characters anything more than intellectual parlour games of film buffs
but also too wild and crazy to shape their knowledge of movies into
anything insightful or masterly. the screaming lunatic in nearly
every coen brother best illustrates this problem. it's a movie cliche
that wants to break into life.
also, if the idea that the coens are testing and examining amounts to
their knowledge of movies, do they have anything to say about things
that matter? social or moral concerns? perhaps, fargo is their
dramatically most effective film, but does anyone have a clear verdict
as to whether the coens' detached view of the unfolding horror is
moralistic, mannerist or simple cowardice.
why 'oh brother' forces me to reexamine the coens.
perhaps, i should allow for time and further viewings to do the trick
before i make the following statement but i loved oh brother where art
thou. and i don't believe i had as a good a time since i saw
kusterica's black cat, white cat.
oh brother hasn't been baptized of coens' usual bag of tricks but
something shines bright here and i don't just mean the astounding
bleached cinematography.
i think, at the very least, the coens finally broke out of the artsy
trappings of their IDEA and broke through into the passion for life,
which here is illustrated as something more than fratparty lunacy.
and maybe the deep south is just what they needed. the deep south of
racial fears and hatreds, wily characters and miscreants, hot and
humid weather, lawless lawmen, its swampy wilderness and its
pretensions at propreity... a crazy mix, a twilight zone from any
vantage point of rest of america.
the world the coens have captured is full of contradictions; it's
hopelessly backward yet clunkily marching along technologically and
socially with the rest of america . it's like some retarded kid who
nevertheless stumbles up the grades. it's a world of eternally misty
and sundripped swamps and forests and a world of radios and movies. a
place so out of tune and haphazard, with such crazy mix of races,
classes, aspirations, it's hard to tell miracles apart from facts,
where reason sinks under magic and where superstitutions are upended
by logical turn of events only to pop up like weeds agains. but this
isn't simple magic realism.
coens' basement tapes?
i've listened to dylan and the band all my life. they reinvigorated
and celebrated the traditions of american music, from folk, blues,
country, r&b, rock and roll and then some. listening to basement
tapes we feel overwhelmed by a sense of authenticity. but how
authentic were these guys really? dylan was actually a chubby
middleclass jewish boy who grew up in minnesota. yet, what dylan and
the band accomplished was a fusion, both raw and sophisticated, of
various threads of american culture. though dylan and robbie
robertson and gang refashioned old musical forms with a perspective
that was modern, eclectic, and perhaps even urbane, the passion and
love of this music was never condesending or trivial. through
layering traditional forms with new approaches and armed with a
devil-may-care chutzpah, dylan drew water from the wellspring of
american musical roots.
the music in basement tapes is somewhat crude and primitive. it's
filled with freak stories, tall tales, misadventures, hillbilly
hallucinations, go-for-broke-bravura-or-nothing. but the energy is
boundless, emotions deep, its heart optimistic.
i mention this because i think to an extent the coen brothers were
after something analogous to what dylan, the band, grateful dead,
byrds, etc. accomplished in popular music in the sixties and beyond. i
don't think the coens are as successful in this respect with their
movie. for starters, dylan's dedication to the music has always been
complete, sincere. that dylan was endlessly experimental with this
music doesn't suggest desecration but appreciation and understanding
that american culture is about freshness, change, new ideas,
crossbreeding, optimism for new something different, better yet all
rooted in the treasury of the past.
one might argue that coens' relation to movie history has been
similar. that their movies are about love of american movie past,
that their movies are experimentations in taking established genres
further or trying something new by mixing different movie conventions.
well, not quite. for starters, the coens were known to be snickering
smartasses back in film school, mainly remembered as sitting in the
back of the screening room, giggling at what others took seriously.
also, it's the nature of movie history and movies themselves that one
cannot approach them in the same way as american music. much of
american movie history has been inauthentic. as filmmaking was
expensive, the average movie was always the expression of the studios
and big businessman than individual artists. any hillbilly could tap
his foot and sing about his gal named sally or any bluesman can sit
and play the piano bellowing about his misery in some sweaty smoke
filled bar but movies were always official rather than individual art.
when someone like dylan listened to odetta or woody guthrie, there was
no one in between dylan and woody or odetta. the sense of bond,
trust, and gratitude was individual to individual, personal, deeply
felt. which is probably why most american songs which drew from the
past do the mock the past. listen to grateful dead's brown eyed
woman, band's the night they drove ole dixie down, or dylan's tears of
rage. though these songs are modern and revisionist reworkings of old
forms, the connection is direct, heartfelt.
but with movies, this has rarely been the case, including, actually
especially, those of the coen brothers. take brian depalma's mission
to mars. it's nothing but cynicism and smartalecky mocking of past
sci-fi movies. oliver stones jfk is a cynical invocation of the
capraesque naivete to feed us the most demented kind of paranoia
imaginable. pulp fiction will have you believe the entire history of
noir is cheap thrill and repressed grostequeries which tarantino the
exhibitionist will finally lay bare for us.
the sense you get from a dylan album or a grateful dead song is good
feeling and gratitude. the sense you get from pulp fiction or mission
to mars is snickering with or against the movie but alas only
snickering. a sense of smartalecky superiority toward the genres,
its conventions, and its characters. of course, this is a crude
generalization; after all, there is scorsese and others like him.
whatever drove the coens to make oh brother, we finally see coens
venture beyond cleverness.
though the film is rife with signature coen touches, it feels like
good ole time religion instead of film schoolish antics procured by
hipsterish cynics. it is inspired!
i dare say oh brother borders on the sublime, is drenched with imagery
that transcends its influences and sources. this is true of the best
of dylan as well. what was earthy and crude was transformed by dylan
into something more far-reaching and complex.
in more than one way, oh brother is not a pleasant experience; it has
elements of a freakshow circus and one might say the images even reek
of grostesque odors. but, this is a rich blend, a truly magical stew,
mighty moonshine, flaming elixir. it is america of gone with the
wind, wizard of oz, sullivan's travels, endless array of americana and
their countless permutations, and even of today, with points of
contact with the recent 'george washington'. it's the beauty of
wilderness blossoming as divine revelation and the fart that seeps
through the soiled undergarments of a runaway convict.
you can swear to almighty God that it's the pure and simple truth and
you can con an old lady with it.
the story is said to be based on homer's odyssey and it's got plenty
of religion from the Good book in it too. you can dismiss this as a
conceit or gimmick but the reference helps to accentuate the great
chaos of life surrounding what one might call the story or narrative.
after all, we are familiar with the basic outline of odysseu's voyage
and we know enough cliches from the bible to recognize what the gist
of christianity is all about. but what comes of ideas and stories
when caught in the storm of swirling mysteries and fury that govern
the world, oblivious of our egocentric delusions?
the protagonist of the story, played by george clooney, has one idea
in mind. to get home back to his wife. in most matters, he's
completely oblivious to the world around him. he's deaf and blind to
wonders, and his narrow day-to-day goal is acquiring his favorite
hair cream and winning back his rather mousy wife and children. he can
be crafty and inventive and in many respects he's an optimist; as such
he's much less a rational person than a rationalizer. but for all
this, his vision of life is restricted to the mundane human world.
only by having been displaced from such comfort and position is he
forced to undergo experiences that lie far beyond ordinary
comprehension.
he's quintessentially one kind of an american. he's a doer, he's
persistent, he finds his way back to home and hearth and finds a place
amongst his fellow humans. as different as he is from the woman cop
in fargo, they are both blind to the complexities, the darkness and
the mystery of the world, in the hearts of men and in the depths of
the woods and water.
it is not clooney who is enraptured or seduced by the strange forces.
when the three convicts come upon a baptism ritual, it is the most
dimwitted member who feels the power of grace and takes the splash.
later, when three women representing the sirens serenade the men, it
is john turturro who flips out. clooney, the most restless talker, is
too full of gab, too singleminded with a set goal, to fall prey to
danger or salvation. he's a middle-roader.
that the story is based on the odyssey implies reveling in the lively
interaction between reality and art. but the politics here is somewhat
reversed. it has been speculated by archaelogists that the odyssey
may actually be a fictionalization of real events. as such, it would
be one of the many great mythic stories inspired by actual human
events. in oh brother, we move from popular myths to a semblance of
reality. of course, movies that are inspired by the myths of american
popular culture is nothing new(and needless to say,those myths are
themselves exaggerated interpretations of once actual reality). most
westerns, gangster films, even so called socially conscious dramas are
reworkings of established genre conventions. and in the 90s we've
seen remakes of old films and tv shows and we seem to live a film
culture that feeds on itself and reality be damned. but oh brother is
different in two respects: its inspirations are taken from an older
america, one almost completely forgotten by modern american culture.
also, the connection with the past goes beyond nostalgia,
self-flattering ridicule, or superficial curiosity. ultimately, after
the diverse parade of grostequeries and americana has passed, one
feels intimately close to the source and vitality of american popular
culture.
on occasion, i've listened to the old recordings of country singers,
folkies, and bluesmen just to get a sense of the traditions that
ultimately led to the glory of rock music. and, once dylan lamented
that many young rockers were listening to him and guys like the stones
but were ignorant and indifferent to the people who inspired dylan and
his contemporaries. in all truth, though i dutifully listened to muddy
waters and the carter family, i remember being bored silly. sure, i
spouted the proper line that these old folks were mighty important and
such but i didn't care to broaden my musical knowledge all that much.
perhaps, it was due to the poor recordings of much of this older
music; lot of it sounded like it was transmitted through a phone line.
it didn't exactly rock.
at the very least, i'm grateful to the coens for making me finally
aware of the richness of this music. the song performed by clooney and
his fellars is a mild crowdpleaser but nothing much; but three
tunes--baptism, sirens, and black gravediggers--completely envelope
us; the richly textured music partnered with the hypnotic images takes
possession of our senses; we not only hear but feel the music coarse
through our bloodstreams. coens don't simply add music to the image
but weave every note of music with every frame of film into
magnificent tapestry; never have sound and images been as inseparable
as here. the baptism scene is a dreamy vision of eternal salvation
and hope in the glory of everloving God and even for a cityslicker
atheist as myself, this was powerful stuff and you feel almost
grateful in understanding why some people find so much happiness in
this religions experience. the song of the sirens is seductively
slippery, snaking around us with silky ease, both calming and exciting
our nerves, promising contentment and innocent pleasure even as we
know better; it works like a tranquilizer, an opiate and we are
helpless against its spell. even more powerful and following these
two biblical themes of salvation and temptation is the number
performed by three black gravediggers and its message is damnation.
the tune starts raggedly enough but as the flood engulfs the world of
our damned heroes, the music takes on startling, awesome dimensions .
it's as though the viewer/listener is swallowed into the bodies of
these black men, slowly digested, transformed, metamorphosized. the
tune gained something like the songs of the whales, grandiose,
magnificent, strange, occult.
in 2001, moulin rouge won accolades from certain quarters for its
inventiveness but for me it was nothing more than a fizzle and a burp.
if you seek a cinematic/musical experience that can purgate the body
and soul, oh brother where art thou is the one.
its conceptual ingenuity alone is worth the price of admission. if
waking life translates live action images into visual poetry, coens
have molded the forgotten, discarded, even discredited imagery of
american culture into living breathing art. at least in cinema,
resurrection is a miracle come true and i welcome this fitfully
maddening and tender frankenstein of a movie.
Nimrod ``
Ancient Race) wrote:
Sorry, Tony....but they have no real grasp or understanding of that
which they play with or exploit, just as you evidently have no grasp
of the milieu they've trumped up and trod over for your amusement.
Just like your long, loverly, and hypnotic treatise here.....for which
I'm tempted, ultimately O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU is film-geek mumbo
jumbo.
N``
Ruth
Damn. Good stuff. I just saved the whole post.
and I couldn't bear to snip any of the above as it summarizes my
feelings on this film , and on many other things so well.
Tony,you are endlessly fascinating ( and often infuriating).
Cadillac_Jones
<firs...@yankeestadium.net> wrote:
>
>Tony,you are endlessly fascinating ( and often infuriating).
Tony is the Kilgore Trout of our times.
"I'm the luckiest man in the world. I have a cigarette
lighter and a wife...and they both work!"
Dale Hicks
anthony...@hotmail.com says...
> oh brother where art thou.
Buy a shift key.
At least it wasn't in all caps, I guess.
--
Cranial Crusader dgh...@bellsouth.net
Nimrod ``
<dgh...@bellSPAMsouth.net.invalid> wrote:
>In article <145695ee.02010...@posting.google.com>,
>anthony...@hotmail.com says...
>> oh brother where art thou.
>
>Buy a shift key.
>
>At least it wasn't in all caps, I guess.
He also might consider paying attention to the proper title of that
which he so adores....
N``
The Avocado Avenger
><firs...@yankeestadium.net> wrote:
>>Tony,you are endlessly fascinating ( and often infuriating).
>Tony is the Kilgore Trout of our times.
Are you accusing him of just fishing for compliments?
Har har. This stuff kills them in alt.obituaries.
Stacia * The Avocado Avenger * Life is a tale told by an idiot;
http://world.std.com/~stacia/ * Full of sound and fury,
There is no guacamole anywhere. * Signifying nothing.