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Web Exclusives: More Film Review O Brother, Where Art Thou? February
7, 2001: O Brother, I love ya By Wes Tooke ’98 In a movie year that
has been largely defined by Hollywood’s unwavering devotion
to the dull and the formulaic, Ethan ’79 and Joel Coen’s
new film O Brother, Where Art Thou? qualifies as nothing less than
a restoration of faith — proof that something good can emerge
from southern California under even the bleakest circumstances.
Of course, the Coens
have made enough interesting films over the last 15 years to make
anything they release a bona fide event. And unlike many innovative
filmmakers, they have been successful enough to gain complete creative
control of their projects — they wrote, produced, and directed
O Brother. Perhaps that explains why they have been able to avoid
the Hollywood plague.
The Coens set O Brother
in the depression-era Deep South, which proves to be a perfect environment
for their usual stylized dialogue. The plot is very loosely based
on the Odyssey, but the relationship between O Brother and Homer
doesn’t warrant close scrutiny — this is no Ulysses. Nevertheless,
the homage adds depth to the film. George Clooney, the lead, plays
his Ulysses as being paralyzed by visions of his own cleverness,
and the Coens have created a riff on sirens and witches that would
make even Joyce chuckle. The setting also allows
the Coens to employ perhaps their greatest gift, which is their
amazing appreciation for the beauty of stupid human beings. O Brother
is littered with some of the finest unintelligent people you will
ever watch on screen. Remarkably, the Coens never resort to cheap
tricks or condescension when detailing these characters; they instead
seem to understand that truly dumb people have to do a lot of thinking
to be that daft. O Brother has so far
met the usual critical reception granted to Coen brother films —
with the possible exception of Fargo. Some reviewers love the film,
and others say things so stupid that you immediately hope that the
Coens will cast them in their next movie. One of the more inane
comments I read is that the jokes in O Brother lack a “payoff.”
I suppose that if the reviewer meant payoff in the modern American
sense of Mary rubbing sperm in her hair, then perhaps he had a point. But if you think payoff is subtly brilliant dialogue — calling someone “dumb as a bag of hammers,” for example — or having bit characters filled with more life than five cardboard Freddie Prinze, Jr., romantic heroes stapled together, then you will find that O Brother contains as many rewards as any film released this year. The brothers have saved us once again. |
On
the spectrum of Coen movies, O Brother feels closest in mood to
Raising Arizona. It’s a caper without the intensity of Fargo
or the surrealism of The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink. I fell in
love with O Brother from the first frames, which may partially explain
the film’s modest opening at the box office. After all, while
I thought that the mainstream Fargo was an excellent movie, I thought
that both Raising Arizona and Barton Fink were better — which
puts me squarely on the lunatic fringe of both society and Coen
brother fans. 