Review: O Brother, Where art thou? (2000)
Scott Renshaw
(Touchstone)
Starring: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Charles
Durning, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Michael Badalucco.
Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, based on "The Odyssey" by Homer.
Producer: Ethan Coen.
Director: Joel Coen.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, violence)
Running Time: 107 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In the opening credits of O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?, Joel and Ethan
Coen announce that the film we are about to see is "based on 'The Odyssey'
by Homer." They do so with the same straight-facedness they employed when
announcing that FARGO was "a true story," and they are equally full of
crap this time around. True, O BROTHER features a character named Ulysses
Everett McGill (George Clooney) trying to get home to his wife Penny
(Holly Hunter). And yes, along the way he encounters a blind prophet, a
one-eyed beast and a trio of sirens that tries to lure him to his doom. He
also winds up in the company of a Mississippi bluesman who claims to have
sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, and a bank-robbing gangster
named George "Baby-Face" Nelson. Funny, but I don't remember them turning
up in my Western Civilizations reading list.
If you really want a sense of what the Coens are after in O BROTHER,
WHERE ART THOU?, it helps to know the origin of the title. In Preston
Sturges' SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, a Depression-era filmmaker popular for his
frivolous comedies decides to hit the road in America to research an
important, significant film story -- a story he plans to call O BROTHER,
WHERE ART THOU? Ultimately, he discovers that people love frivolous
comedies, and that there's no shame in creating them. Forget epics of the
common man; make them laugh, and you've got them right where you want
them, and right where they want to be.
I'm not sure I could make an argument for the Coens' O BROTHER, WHERE
ART THOU? being flawless film-making. It is, however, the most utterly
demented, unashamedly un-important and purely entertaining film experience
I've had all year. The central plot finds Clooney's McGill fleeing a
Depression-era Mississippi chain gang with fellow convicts Pete (John
Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). They're heading for $1.2 million
McGill has hidden from a pre-incarceration heist, money that's days away
from being sent to the bottom of a lake by a dam project. But that journey
to the treasure takes many turns, during which the three fortune-tossed
men join Nelson for a bank job, become inadvertent recording stars and
wind up in the middle of a floundering re-election bid by Governor Pappy
O'Daniel (Charles Durning).
Essentially, there's nothing to O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? but a
string of comic misadventures. Coen brothers characters don't often occupy
a particularly moral universe, so there's not really a lesson or point to
any of it. Manic-depressive gangster Nelson takes his Tommy gun to a herd
of cows. The governor's campaign team laments their opponent's clever use
of a midget as a representative of "the little man" he stands for. McGill
shows nearly as much interest in finding his preferred brand of pommade as
he does in finding his loot. It's an exercise in free-form narrative
cinema, held together by the Coens' distinctive whip-smart dialogue and
their gift for putting the right face on every role.
And it's constantly, gut-bustingly hilarious. Viewers who have been
lukewarm to previous Coen projects aren't likely to become converts this
time around, but if you're in tune with their warped sensibilities, you're
in for a treat. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? is the kind of film you'll
spend most of the time watching with your mouth open, either laughing out
loud or in dumbfounded amazement at what they're able to put on a screen.
And few things are as dumbfoundingly amazing as George Clooney's
loose-limbed comic performance, the kind of work that forces you to
re-think an actor's versatility. From his know-it-all soliloquies to his
performance of the bluegrass standard "Man of Constant Sorrow," Clooney
takes every bizarre situation and runs with it as far as the Coens will
let him. In a cast full of great comics and Coen film veterans (Turturro,
Durning, Hunter, John Goodman), Clooney steals the show.
It happens to be a joyous show he's stealing. Somewhere creeping
around the edges of O BROTHER is a commentary on our need for religion and
mythology even in an "age of reason," with its combination of Greek legend
and American folk tales. It would be ridiculous, however, to argue that
this is the Coens' personal "Odyssey." It dips and swerves, hits its lulls
then tears back into remarkably goofy set pieces. There's no important
message here, no contemporary re-working of an ancient classic. This,
folks, is film-making that aims for nothing more profound than the funny
bone. This, folks, in all its glory, is frivolous comedy.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 opposite-field Homers: 10.
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