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    		•

    FILMS

    O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
  • Starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Chris Thomas King, Charles Durning, Del Pentecost, Michael Badalucco

  • Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

  • Based on the epic poem The Odyssey, by Homer

    • Some people love the Coen Brothers. Others despise them. Their films are definitely of a particular taste that, for some, take a little getting used to. Some people love George Clooney. Others despise him. He was handsome and smooth playing Dr. Doug Ross on E.R.. He's handsome and smooth playing Major Archie Gates in Three Kings. He's handsome and smooth playing Daniel Ocean in Ocean's Eleven. (Not to worry, I won't even mention his stint as Batman.) He easy to dislike, if not for his good looks, than for what appears to be typecasting and lack of acting range.

    So you don't like Coen Brothers' movies, and you don't like George Clooney? Well, maybe you should take a gander at O Brother, Where Art Thou?. (If you like the Coens and Clooney, then this film isn't a very hard sell. You've probably already seen it, and most definitely thoroughly enjoyed it.)

    I am not an across-the-board Coen Brothers fan; neither am I a Clooney lover (see Batman comment above.) But O Brother is (and don't kill me for saying this) a feel-good film. But it's an honest feel-good film, not one that manipulates you into making you think you should feel good. After I turned the DVD player off, I was happy. I felt like singing "A Man of Constant Sorrow"—the theme song for the flick. While we're at it, I should point out that I'm neither a bluegrass fan nor a country fan, but "Constant Sorrow" is catchy and fun. Even if the lyrics are a bit sad.

    (Fair spoiler warning: Don't read any further if you don't want to know nothin' 'bout this here film.)

    O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a loose (very, very loose) retelling of the story of Homer's Odyssey which chronicles Odysseus' 10-year voyage home after the Trojan War. In O Brother, Ulysses (Clooney) breaks free from from a chain gang in order to get home to his wife. Under the guise of escaping to recover a large stash of money, Ulysses enlists the aid of two fellow chain-gang members, Pete (Turturro) and Delmar (Nelson).

    Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar, incidentally and metaphorically, collectively have one brain that they share. To say that none of them are terribly smart would be a gross understatement. Ulysses is loquacious but has little common sense. Pete is dumb and a tad mean-tempered. Del ... well, Del's just an innocent thickie caught up in an adventure. They're all ignorant and simple and quirky and admirable. They're just regular guys trying to get along in their journey ...to wherever it is they're going.

    Along the way the three convicts meet a blind prophet, a man who sold his soul to the devil for guitar skills, a cycloptic book salesman, a trio of sirens (hubba hubba!) washing their laundry by the river, lots of white supremacists, a handful of politicians, a bovine slaughtering George "Babyface" Nelson, and a radio station owner who records a song for them.

    All of this adds up to a quest-based plot that delivers scene after scene. Clooney is neither smooth nor handsome in this film. He's not a brave man. (Hearing him scream when the barn's on fire is one of the funniest things I've seen in years.) He's not an honest man. And he's compulsively obsessed about his hair; Dapper Dan being his hair treatment of choice. It's the little details like this that sell the movie.

    I watched some of the DVD extras and featurettes. The digital filming process is continually astonishing me. Apparently the Coen Brothers shot this film in the middle of summer, somewhere in middle America. Well, the problem is, the Coens wanted it to have a very dusty, Grapes of Wrath feel to the film. Well, mid-summer in middle America just ain't gonna look like that. It'll be green and verdant and lush. From what I could tell, it appears as if they digitally manipulated and altered most scenes to appear more dry. They did this by filtering out any bright colors and swamping them with more muted autumnal colors. The effect is completely transparent. I hadn't even given it a second though while watching it. But knowing this after the fact impresses me even more.

    O Brother, Where Art Thou? doesn't end happily ever after. Which isn't such a bad thing. I got the feeling that Ulysses is the type of guy who will always have hurdles to overcome, mostly because his mouth and his brain are rarely working in unison. But the big troubles for Ulysses are over. Compared to what he's been through, everything else is gravy.

    Now, gimme my Dapper Dan and a hairnet!

    What's this? Fop? I don't want Fop! That's not proper pomade!