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A weak
offering from the Coen brothers will usually still be head and
shoulders above most other films, a point proven with O
Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Compared to any of the Coen’s previous films, O
Brother just doesn’t measure up.
But since the brothers have consistently made some of the
best films over the last decade and a half, even something that
doesn't seem up to their usual standards can tower over its
competition.
O Brother,
which is loosely based on Homer’s “The Odyssey,” in set in
1937 Mississippi, where a rock-breaking chain gang appears on
the screen after the nifty silent movie title cards used for the
film’s opening credits. Three of the convicts (apparently the
only three white prisoners there) escape through a giant
cornfield and are quickly involved in two very funny sight gags
because of their still-shackled feet.
The
fast-talking leader of the group is Everett Ulysses McGill
(George Clooney, The Perfect Storm),
who orchestrated the jailbreak because only four days remain
before his “treasure” will be underwater. The treasure in
question is from an armored car robbery McGill pulled off some
years earlier, while the "underwater" comment remains
somewhat of a mystery. In
addition to the treasure, McGill also has some pretty serious
issues with his hair, which he constantly slicks back with
Dapper Dan’s Pomade.
McGill’s
two sidekicks are Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro, Cradle
Will Rock) and Delmar O'Donnel (Tim Blake Nelson, The
Thin Red Line), two animated dimwits who specialize in
hysterical slack-jawed expressions.
The three men begin the trek to McGill’s home, but
first they come upon a strange black man speaking in riddles
that foreshadow what the escaped cons are going to encounter
over the next four days.
And, oh, the
things they encounter. They
rob a bank with the manically sensitive “Babyface” Nelson
(Michael Badalucco, The Practice), interrupt a Ku Klux
Klan rally, run into a slightly deranged bible salesman (John
Goodman, Normal, Ohio), cross paths with three lovely
sirens, and even cut a hit record at a radio station owned by a
blind man (Stephen Root, Bicentennial
Man). And
the coppers are on their tail the entire journey.
O Brother
is full of all kinds of great ‘30s slang and mannerisms, plus
some wonderful Southern accents. The music is first-rate, too, with most being penned by
T-Bone Burnett (he was part of Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder
Review”) and Chris Thomas King, who appears in the film as a
blues musician at a familiar crossroads after a certain
appointment (his name is Johnson – Tommy, not Robert).
And Roger Deakins' (Thirteen Days)
lush photography is spellbinding, giving every scene in O
Brother a golden glow that could translate to a golden night
at next year’s Oscar ceremony.
The
negatives of O Brother are pretty minor.
At times, it seems like the Coens (The Big Lebowski)
just stuck a bunch of random ideas together, using bits that
they couldn’t squeeze into their previous films. From the color of the leaves and the dead corn stalks that
make up the backgrounds of nearly every scene, it should be
autumn, but a newspaper tells us it’s the middle of July.
The film also wags its tongue at P.E.T.A., showing some
pretty bad stuff happening to animals for comedic value.
Surprisingly,
O Brother is practically a musical, offering more than a
couple of nicely orchestrated song and dance numbers.
Also somewhat shocking is the strong performance from
Clooney, who seems totally wrong for a role like this, but does
an exceedingly good job. Turturro
and the relatively unknown Nelson (he directs an upcoming
version of Othello” – called O) deliver great
performances, too. An interesting note: Turturro supplied the voice of
Badalucco’s dog when he played David Berkowitz in Summer
of Sam.
| 1:46
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for
adult language, violence and some bad animal cruelty |
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