Oh Brother Where Art Thou Hand Me That Chopper

The Coen Brothers have not yet made a musical, although I believe the idea has been discussed. This is surprising in a manner, because at that place is something naturally musical about the footstep and style of a Coen motion-picture show. The films are artificial and lay peachy accent on spectacle. The dialogue has rhythm and cadence, and certain phrases are repeated like leitmotifs.

The nearest that the Coens take come up to making a musical so far is O Brother, Where Art Thou. Music and singing feature in a large number of scenes in the moving-picture show, and the characters themselves sing a few of the songs.

The tunes are not original numbers written for the motion picture, but a collection of folk and religious songs from the menses in which the story is set (the action takes place in 1937). Music is so important to the film that the soundtrack to O Blood brother, Where Art Thou was really more successful than the film, selling v million copies and winning a Grammy Award.

Within the pic likewise, music plays a meaning part in the fates of the characters. Our heroes uses music to make a little money by going into a local recording studio and performing a embrace version of Man of Constant Sorrow, and this tune volition ultimately show to be their salvation. Their friend Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas Rex) values music so much that he patently sold his soul to the devil to amend his guitar skills.

Music is exploited for cynical ends too. The two political rivals, Menelaus 'Pappy' O'Daniel (Charles Durning) and Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall) utilise music to support their political campaigns, and a moment of inspired opportunism finally gives Pappy the shot in the arm that his flagging entrada needs when he publicly backs the Soggy Bottom Boys. By contrast, Homer's set on on the musicians is the crusade of his downfall.

People are often swayed by music. The sound of Baptists singing 'Downwardly to the River to Pray' is enough to persuade two of the escaped convicts, Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) to eagerly go themselves baptised. Later a trio of sirens lure the convicts onto the rocks with a rendition of 'Didn't Exit Nobody just the Infant', and manus i of them over to the law in order to get the reward money.

Music is merely one of the influences on O Blood brother, Where Art Thousand. As is widely known, the shape of the story is loosely shaped by Homer's verse form, The Odyssey. This is despite the fact that the Coens confessed to not having read Homer's original piece of work. Ironically the but cast member who had read the work was Tim Blake Nelson. He plays an unintelligent hayseed in the motion picture, but really Nelson has a caste in classics.

Of course one does not have to read The Odyssey to be familiar with the tale. I learnt most of its details when I was at schoolhouse, and the story is well-known. Classical scholars will insist that The Iliad is the better work, but a verse form describing a few battles in wartime volition never capture our imagination in the same was as a saga about a human journey domicile, and facing a series of episodic events that cry out for symbolic or allegorical interpretation.

I volition not state all the echoes of The Odyssey here, only I have mentioned a few already. The political candidates are called Homer and Menelaus (the name of Helen of Troy's husband). In the Odyssey, actual sirens try to lure Odysseus and his crew onto the rocks with their beautiful singing. The Baptists comport echoes of the Lotus Eaters, a race of people living on an island who alive in a permanent state of sleepiness due to consumption of the lotus plant.

The central premise of the story is the same as that of The Odyssey. The hero is Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney). Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus, and in The Odyssey, the titular character is journeying home to his married woman. This wife, Penelope, is existence plagued by suitors, who insist that Odysseus must be expressionless. One interpretation of the etymology of Odysseus' name suggests that it ways 'man of sorrow', words that are echoed in the song that Everett sings in the picture show, 'Man of Constant Sorrow'.

The motivation of Everett is only fabricated clear later on. Similar Odysseus, he has a gift for glib speech, although he is not as smart as he thinks he is. Nonetheless he is plausible and persuasive, and has all the charms of a salesman. This includes a fondness for hair products. He wakes up mumbling 'My pilus" and has an altercation with a shop owner who tries to sell him Fop instead of Dapper Dan, his favoured pomade. (Incidentally the film led to an increase in sales for both products.)

Everett has escaped from a chain gang with his friends Pete and Delmar, whom he persuaded to join him past telling them a story virtually cached loot that must exist rescued within a few days earlier the surface area is flooded to create a lake. In bodily fact, his existent motive for escaping the chain gang is the same one that propelled Odysseus on his journey. He wishes to render home to see his married woman, also called Penelope.

This Penny (Holly Hunter) is a different figure from Homer's heroine. Far from resisting suitors, she has accepted ane equally her fiancé, and it is she who is telling people that her husband is expressionless, because she is ashamed of him. As in Raising Arizona, I cannot help deploring that the charming Holly Hunter is consigned to the part of a shrewish harpy in Coen movies. Here she is sharp with her married man, and has an unreasonable habit of counting to ten before forming an unshakeable resolution, no matter how impractical that might be.

Everett wishes to tackle her new suitor Vernon T Waldrip (Ray McKinnon), but Waldrip proves to be taller and a improve fighter. Instead Everett is bested in the brawl, and has the boosted indignity of beingness banned from Woolworths. The rest of the story is unimportant, since information technology is the humour, incidental item and extraordinary visual trickery that make the picture show a joy to watch. Essentially Everett must seek to woo Penny back while keeping himself, Pete and Delmar from being recaptured by the law.

Coen films frequently show sympathy for criminals and outcasts. We are encouraged to root for the escaped convicts. The movie's 3 heroes and the crowds watching the Soggy Bottom Boys concert are sympathetic to black people such equally Tommy – if simply Mississippi really did take such a reputation for tolerance! Admittedly Tommy is nonetheless a lesser character than the three white convicts, and information technology is necessary for white men to rescue him from a lynching later. Some attitudes accept not inverse that much.

Authority figures are the real villains. Politicians are corrupt and weak. The law is a relentless and unforgiving body. Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen) pursues the convicts without cease. His dark sunglasses reverberate fire in them, giving him a sinister wait. He tortures Pete, and nearly kills the convicts. When he catches upwardly with them, he intends to have them hanged. When they protestation that is against the law. Cooley answers: "The police is a man institution".

The cruelty of the chain gangs that were forced to cutting up rocks nether brutal conditions was not a new theme in cinema, and O Blood brother, Where Art Thou pays homage to a number of old movies. A chain gang featured in the prison movie, Cool Hand Luke, and the warden in that movie bears a resemblance to Sheriff Cooley. Both clothing dark spectacles and use bloodhounds.

The most obvious inspiration is Sullivan's Travels, a 1940s comedy by Preston Sturges most a pic director who wishes to write a film highlighting social injustices. The moving picture that he wishes to brand is also called O Brother, Where Art K. Along the style, the manager is accidentally arrested and thrown onto a chain gang where he is treated badly.

Other films are affectionately referenced. In ane scene, the Ku Klux Klan bears a comic resemblance to the Wicked Witch's army in The Magician of Oz. The Klansmen march in a dancing formation and their dirge is similar to that of the Witch's soldiers: "All nosotros owe, we owe her". Our heroes infiltrate the KKK past knocking a few Klansmen unconscious and stealing their capes, merely as the Lion, Scarecrow and Tinman do in the other moving-picture show. The flood at the terminate recalls the climax of Moby Dick.  Everett and his friends cling to a coffin to survive the deluge whilst Tommy has the misfortune to exist trying to concord onto a rotating roll-top desk.

It is not only old cinema but historical events that inspired O Blood brother, Where Fine art Thou. There really was a Tommy Johnson, a dejection musician who is said to take sold his soul to the devil. Another historical figure who appears in the flick is the bank robber George 'Baby Face' Nelson (played past Michael Badalucco), although the original Nelson had died iii years before the movie is set. Pappy O'Daniel and Homer Stokes are also composites of various politicians of the time.

While the Coens looked to the past for inspiration (erstwhile movies and historical characters), they too embraced mod applied science in the making of the motion-picture show. This was one of the first movies to use digital colour correction throughout. This is used at the start and end to turn black-and-white gradually into colour and back. The color tinting bleeds out the green lush landscape, and gives everything an autumnal, dusty look, similar the sepia colouring in The Wizard of Oz.

Digital effects are used to magical effect during the climactic flood scene, where we watch items that we have seen earlier in the story floating past nether the water – Cooley'southward sunglasses, a bloodhound, a tyre swing, a banjo, and of course a large supply of Everett'south tins of Dapper Dan. (The flood is anticipated by the choice of band name that Everett chooses when he records 'Man of Constant Sorrow' – they are chosen The Soggy Bottom Boys.)

Information technology non just the manner and content of O Blood brother, Where Art Grand that is a mix of the sometime and the new. It might be argued that the main theme of the film is the clash betwixt the irrational superstitions and ignorance of the Old South and the coming world of rationalism and modernity that never quite replaces it. Every bit we are told more than than once in the moving-picture show, people are looking for answers, and they seek them in both scientific and superstitious ways of thinking.

Throughout the picture nosotros run into people with a range of illogical behavior that govern their behaviour, sometimes in a harmless manner, and sometimes in a unsafe way. The Baptists are harmless plenty, and then is the foolishness of Pete and Delmar who somehow imagine that a baptism volition clear them in the eyes of the law as well as god.

There is no hurt in the blind quondam man travelling along the rail rails, who makes predictions about the travails of the three convicts that are vague enough to come true, and a more baroque prophecy that they will see a cow on the roof of a cotton business firm. Blindness or short-sightedness is a running motif in the film – the bullheaded man who runs the recording studio, the thick glasses of Homer Stokes, the dark sunglasses worn past Sheriff Cooley, and the eyepatch sported by the conman and Bible salesman Big Dan Teague (John Goodman).

Irrational behavior have their nighttime side too, although the flick never allows the states to dwell on them. There is Baby Confront Nelson, the psychotic and reckless bank robber who is motivated more by irrational bouts of euphoria and depression than by a longing for money. We too encounter the KKK attempting to lynch Tommy. Nevertheless the sight of the Klan singing and dancing is absurd, and the outfit of the Klansmen appears in comic forms. A midget wears the aforementioned outfit equally the Imperial Wizard in miniature. A equus caballus is seen dressed in the familiar cape. Large Dan Teague is among the Klansmen, with but one center slit cut into this hood.

The dangers of irrational beliefs are set out here, albeit in cartoonish form. Set against these is the movie'south hero, Everett, a confirmed sceptic. Everett is ever ready with a rational explanation and a scornful dismissal of his friend'southward naïve superstitions. Later Pete and Delmar get themselves baptised, and Tommy tells them that he has sold his soul to the devil, Everett jokes, "I guess I'm the merely i who remains unaffiliated".

Of course the influence of his colleagues and the environment around him will often impact Everett too, and he will sometimes bend in the direction of credulity. He is partly swayed by Delmar'southward conviction that the sirens have turned Pete into a toad. When the convicts face decease towards the end of the picture show, Everett is prepared to pray for his life.

Still when his fortunes go better, Everett is presently back to his boastful and unbelieving self. At the end, Everett is convinced that the flooding of the valley will "hydro-electric upwards the whole durned country", and finally alter the attitudes of his beau southerners:

Yessir, the Southward is gonna alter. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin' footing. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We're gonna see a dauntless new earth where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason – similar the one they had in French republic – and not a moment too soon…

Unfortunately Everett's fine speech is undermined when he suddenly sees a cow on the roof of a cotton house. The incongruity and impossibility of the sight, and its prediction by the old man at the beginning of the film, shows usa that possibly the onetime backwards mumbo-colossal of the S may not be about to modify every bit much as Everett imagines after all. Given that these unreasonable beliefs have contributed so much wonderful textile to the creation of this moving picture, I can't help suspecting that the Coens are secretly glad about that.

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