FilmFestivals.com - Cannes 2000

About the time they wrapped The Big Lebowski and were gearing up for its European premiere at the 1998 Film Festival, the Coen brothers were already talking aboutttheir next movie. But which one would it be? The hairdresser project? To The White Sea their WW2 movie with Brad Pitt? Or, most preposterous of all, their adaptation of Homer's ancient classic, The Odyssey? The latter seemed bizarre even by the Coens' natural standards, and even they seemed to think it amusing, cracking jokes about how great it would be to see spelt out: "Based upon the Odyssey by Homer" in (their words) "big, crumbly letters".

Astonishingly, this is the movie they went on to make (although the big crumbly letters have made way for a stately black-and-white title card, in the style of a silent movie dialogue frame). And Homer's fable was indeed the starting point for O Brother Where Art Thou?. As Joel puts it, "this project's been in the works for 3,000 years, ever since Homer started yapping about it". The result is a lively and funny, Depression-era, fantasy-musical-comedy that as is the Coens' wont blurs several movie genres together, with a superb script and a terrific team of actors.

Heading the cast is George Clooney, wryly sending up his matinee-idol image as the film's Clark Gable-style hero, Everett Ulysses McGill (whose fondness for hairnets and Dapper Dan hair grease is a running joke throughout).

McGill is shackled to a chain gang, ostensibly for his part in a major bank robbery. But by using his powers of persuasion he gets two bird-brained fellow prisoners Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim
Blake Nelson) to join him in making an escape bid.

The carrot he uses to entice them is a story of hidden gold the proceeds from the robbery and the two dimwits happily throw themselves in with him. Once they escape, a wise, blind railway worker helps them on their way, accurately predicting some of the sights they will see over the next few days. But it is his final words which prove to be the most prophetic. "You will find a fortune," he tells them, "but not the fortune you seek."

The title comes from Preston Sturges' 1941 film Sullivan's Travels, in which Hollywood producer Joel McCrea longs to make an epic film about poverty and hardship. Dressed as a tramp, he goes under cover in the first part of town to research the film, to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

With its jaunty humour, the film is also likely to be compared to Frank Capra, whose most popular work was his lighter, Depression-era fare, and not the 1946 Christmas fantasy It's A Wonderful Life, which was deemed too simplistic for sophisticated post-war audiences. The Coens' film is surprisingly light for them too, being closer in tone to the physical farce of their underrated comedy The Hudsucker Proxy than the tight, dry writing showcased in Barton Fink, Fargo and Miller's Crossing.

Anyone put off the Coens' trademark cerebral sense of humour, which sometimes borders on calculated, will be surprised at how warm and almost spontaneous the whole film feels especially in scenes with Tim Blake Nelson as the cretinous, lovable Delmar. And to power things along, the score features an infectious mix of bluegrass and spirituals re-recorded, arranged and in one case even written by country singer T Bone Burnett. "Music became a very prominent feature very early on in the writing," says Joel, "and it just became more so as we went along. There are very few scenes in the movie that don't have an in-screen musical element to them."

In fact, the music actually dictated the Coens' decision to set the film in the deep south of America, where location filming around the Mississippi area took them to perfectly preserved rustic backwaters, with names like Yazoo City and D'Lo. "Early on," says Ethan, "the issue of music began to inform our thinking about it, and that argued for a southern setting. One other thing that conspired to make it southern was the early idea of making the characters chain-gang refugees."

"The two things came together at the same time," adds Joel. "It all coalesced around the idea of doing a relatively contemporary version of The Odyssey, but in this region, with bluegrass music."

Who else but the Coen brothers could conceive of such a thing? And who else could hope to pull off? O Brother, Where Art Thou? is yet another dazzling entry in peculiar CV, occupying the divide between mainstream and arthouse. It's the real thing. It's bona fide.

Damon Wise