What Novel Is O Brother Where Art Thou Said to Be Loosely Based on
The opening titles inform us that the Coen Brothers' "O Brother, Where Fine art Thou?" is based on Homer'south The Odyssey . The Coens claimed their "Fargo" was based on a truthful story, just later confided it wasn't; this time they confess they haven't actually read The Odyssey . Even so, they've captivated the spirit. Similar its inspiration, this film is one darn matter after another.
The film is a Homeric journey through Mississippi during the Depression--or rather, through all of the images of that time and place that take been trickling downward through pop culture e'er since. At that place are even walk-ons for characters inspired by Babyface Nelson and the blues vocaliser Robert Johnson, who speaks of a crossroads soul-selling rendezvous with the devil.
Bluegrass music is at the heart of the movie, as it was of "Bonnie and Clyde," and there are images of concatenation gangs, sharecropper cottages, cotton wool fields, populist politicians, river baptisms, hobos on freight trains, patent medicines, 25-watt radio stations and Klan rallies. The motion picture's title is lifted from Preston Sturges' 1941 one-act "Sullivan's Travels" (it was the uplifting picture the hero wanted to make to redeem himself), and from Homer we get a Cyclops, sirens bathing on rocks, a hero named Ulysses, and his wife Penny, which is no dubiety short for Penelope.
If these elements don't exactly add upward, maybe they're not intended to. Homer's epic grew out of the tales of many storytellers who went before; their episodes were timed and intended for a night's recitation. Quite possibly no 1 earlier Homer saw the developing work as a whole. In the same spirit, "O Blood brother" contains sequences that are wonderful in themselves--lovely short films--but the movie never actually shapes itself into a whole.
The opening shot shows 3 prisoners escaping from a chain gang. They are Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson). From their peculiar confidence that they are invisible every bit they duck and encounter an open field, we know the flick'southward soul is in farce and satire, although it touches other notes, too--it'south an anthology of moods. McGill (played by Clooney every bit if Clark Gable were a patent medicine salesman) doesn't much want company on his escape, but since he is chained to the other two, he has no choice. He enlists them in his cause by telling them of hidden treasure.
What was The Odyssey, afterwards all, but a road motion picture? "O Brother" follows its three heroes on an odyssey during which they intersect with a political entrada, become radio stars by accident, stumble upon a Klan coming together and bargain with McGill's wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), who is about to pack up with their seven daughters and marry a man who won't always be getting himself thrown into jail.
Hunter and Turturro are veterans of earlier Coen movies, and so is John Goodman, who plays a slick-talking Bible salesman. Charles Durning appears as a gubernatorial candidate with the populist jollity of Huey Long, and the story strands see and split up as if the movie is happening mostly by chance and adept luck--a nice feeling sometimes, although not ane that inspires conviction that the narrative railroad train has an engine.
The most effective sequence in the movie is the Klan rally (complete with a Klansman whose eye patch means he needs only one pigsty in his sheet). The choreography of the ceremony seems poised somewhere between Busby Berkeley and "Triumph of the Will," and the Coens succeed in making it look ominous and ridiculous at the same time.
Another sequence nigh stops the prove, it'south so haunting in its self-contained way. It occurs when the escapees come across three women doing their laundry in a river. The Sirens, obviously. They sing "Didn't Go out Nobody but the Baby" while moving in a slightly slowed motility, and the outcome is--well, what it's supposed to be, mesmerizing.
I as well like the sequence of events beginning when the lads perform on the radio every bit the Soggy Mountain Boys. By at present they have recruited a black partner, Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King), and later when the vocal becomes a striking, they're called on to perform before an audience that is hostile to blacks in particular and escaped convicts in general. They wear false beards. Really false beards.
All of these scenes are wonderful in their different means, and yet I left the motion-picture show uncertain and unsatisfied. I saw it a second time, admired the same parts, left with the same feeling. I exercise not need that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to finish, and indeed one of the charms of "The Big Lebowski," the Coens' previous flick, is how its stoned hero loses track of the thread of his own life. Merely with "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" I had the sense of invention set adrift; of a series of bright ideas wondering why they had all been invited to the same moving picture.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the moving-picture show critic of the Chicago Sunday-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Now playing
Pic Credits
O Brother, Where Fine art Yard? (2000)
103 minutes
Latest blog posts
Comments
Source: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/o-brother-where-art-thou-2000
0 Response to "What Novel Is O Brother Where Art Thou Said to Be Loosely Based on"
Post a Comment