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Hear
Carla Freccero's review in Real AudioO Brother Where Art Thou?
Other priceless scenes include a take-off on the encounter with the Sirens. Here Coen stops the action, imitating the mesmerizing via music that those gals were so famous for when Ulysses insisted on listening. The three guys also encounter a Cyclops (played by another Coen brothers' regular, John Goodman) who, instead of being outsmarted by our hero as in the original, rips off the good Christian boys with his opportunistic Bible-selling rhetoric. And, of course, there's Penny (short for Penelope, get it?), Ulysses's wife, played by Holly Hunter, who has six daughters and, as one of them points out, a "suitor," echoing The Odyssey's reference to the rivals who hang out at his house.
Copyright Carla Freccero 2001 |
Now
playing at the Galaxy 6 and Scotts Valley Cinemas, O Brother Where Art
Thou? is the new film directed by Joel Coen and written by both Joel and
Ethan, better known as the Coen brothers. Well, it's also, as the
credits say, "based on The Odyssey by Homer." Using the notion of a kind
of anti-heroic journey down a long road, and here we also see references
to The Wizard of Oz, the story is about three white cons escaped from a
chain gang travelling through Mississippi during the Depression in search
of hidden treasure. George Clooney, whose name is Ulysses Everett
McGill, plays that famous old Greek anti-hero himself, and his buddies
are John Turturro as Pete (a staple of Coen brothers' films) and Del (Tim
Blake Nelson). Their adventures take them to some strange places and produce
some strange encounters, both of which are true to the spirit of the very
first road movie ever, The Odyssey.
Early
on in the story they receive a prophecy from a blind Black man "the poet"--who
tells them that they will discover amazing things, but not what they expect.
The rest of the encounters bear the traces of that ancient song as they
have appeared in popular culture ever since, nicely imitating the spirit
of The Odyssey as a story told and retold to different audiences with many
variations. The movie is also musical; the cons at one point, after
picking up a Black man named Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King), who
sold his soul to Satan in exchange for receiving the gift of guitar playing--record
a song for money in a remote radio station recording studio. They
sing a beautiful version of "Man of Constant Sorrow," and dub themselves
the Soggy Bottom Boys, becoming famous unbeknownst to them as they leave
the station and continue on their journey. The whole film though treats
us to breathtakingly beautiful music that mixes bluegrass, blues and gospel.
Musically, this film is a grab bag of southern cultural history; visually
too, in the sepia-colored references to the photography of Walker Evans
and Dorothea Lange.
One
of the more haunting aspects of this film is the way in which, as they
travel, the three keep bumping into various Christian religious sects,
cults, groups, and worshippers, including the Ku Klux Klan, who perform
a terrifying and comic ritual reminiscent of that weird combination of
horror and humor that Fargo evoked so well. And the Coen brothers
treat these groups with seriousness even as they criticize them, pointing
out just how much this countryís history is bound up with fundamentalist,
evangelical, and charismatic traditions. They also, in their irreverent
and indirect way, confront us over and over with the countryís legacy
of both casual and lethal racism. This is a historically pertinent
"if mythical film;" it is also beautiful, smart, funny, and entertaining.
Looking for trouble at the movies, for KUSP and the film gang, this is
Carla Freccero.