A few years ago, when the filmmaking team of the Coen brothers released their previous cinematic venture The Big Lebowski, I reviewed it for a now-defunct newspaper, a rival of the Arrow's. In that review, I stated my feeling that any comparison of that film to the Coen brothers' previous works like Fargo or Raising Arizona would be unjust, that the film should stand on its own merit as a good-but not great-comedy.
Now I have the good fortune to still be reviewing films, albeit with a change of venue, as the Coen brothers' new film O Brother, Where Art Thou? hits theaters, and I find myself echoing a lot of the same thoughts as I had with their previous outing. The films of Joel and Ethan Coen stand out in the mind so much because they are so very different, not only from the rest of the face of American cinema, but even from each other. Each of their films tries something new and, successful or not, they definitely have the advantage of being fresh and original rather than a repetition of the same old, same old, even when they are based on familiar sources.
That said, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is clearly a movie that has a definite lack of unity with its plot, instead being a jumbled mix of scene after scene that seems to have no connection with the rest of the film. The film is basically the Coens' attempt to make a road movie, and each scene then is just another in a set of adventures the heroes have on their way to their larger goal. Along the way they meet interesting characters and (I've always wanted to say this in a review) shenanigans ensue, but each episode of the tale fails to fit into some larger context or story arc as the individual chapters of a road movie should.
For source material the Coens turned to the most inspiring source they could think of, Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, a work that was also episodic but had that sense of cohesion missing in this film. Here the scenes seem thrown together purely to make us marvel at the zany hi-jinks the main characters get into. Our three protagonists in O Brother are escaped convicts Everett (the leader whose first name, coincidentally enough, is Ulysses), Pete, and Delmar, who are heading out on the open road to try to recover treasure. This cache of loot was the proceeds Everett gained from robbing an armored car and buried shortly before he was captured. Now the area where the loot is buried will soon be flooded, and the escapees have but three days to get to the location and recover these ill-gotten gains before they are lost forever.
But while this summary makes it sound like they are heading for that common goal, recovering the money, in reality the treasure is only a plot device, not even really one that matters that much to the characters in the film. The three convicts are easily distracted from their quest and go off on tangents endlessly that, while slightly amusing, do not lead them anywhere important. And by the end of the film, the treasure has been completely abandoned in pursuit of another, less spectacular objective.
Many of the episodes in the film seem pointless, such as the sudden appearance of a church choir in the woods where Delmar is cooking up some gophers he caught for their dinner. This scene occurs for no reason other than to give Pete and Delmar a false sense of spirituality to be mocked for the rest of the film. Yet other scenes seem inspired; at one point the three meet a young man named Tommy who sold his soul to the devil so he could learn to play the guitar. The inclusion of this character, a young African-American, serves not only to help place the setting of the film more firmly in the Depression-era South, but also allows the Coens to establish a dichotomy between the poorly established morality of Pete and Delmar and Tommy's willingness to give up something he feels that he "wasn't using anyway." Some scenes are incredibly funny, like when one character the trio of heroes runs into expresses his deep-seeded hatred for certain farm animals; other scenes seem clichéd and tasteless, like the KKK rally late in the film that is supposed to be played for comic effect.
In the end the Coens try to make up for the film's disarray by tying everything together neatly with a bow by the end of one scene, including a running subplot about an upcoming gubernatorial election. But the Coens are trying to do too much at once, and this scene ends up resolving things too neatly. That all these characters should come together in one place is an outrageous coincidence, and the reference back to the KKK rally to turn popular opinion against one character seems like an easy out. It doesn't help any that the election subplot is rather boring in the first place, lacking in any real laughs in its numerous appearances throughout the course of the story.
It is truly a shame that they couldn't do more with this script, as the acting caliber in the film is great. Each of the principle characters, Everett, Pete, and Delmar, is played with brilliant comedic exaggeration by George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson respectively. Nelson especially is brilliant, displaying a real talent at portraying the dimwitted but goodhearted Delmar. The supporting cast too is wonderful, including John Goodman as a one-eyed Bible salesman and Michael Badalucco as a tommy gun wielding gangster who gets dissatisfied with his life when the excitement of robbing banks wears off. It is a real shame that their talents could not have been put to better use.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? then is an uneven film, with great performances and some really funny moments, but that is never able to gel into one solid unit. The Coen brothers, like I said in the beginning, have never been afraid to try something new, but I'm simply afraid that this picture isn't quite up to snuff. Luckily we can rest assured that their next film will again take them in a totally different direction, but still in that same vein of quirkiness we have all come to expect from them
