“O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” a loosely based parody of the epic poem, the “Odyssey,” is one of those movies that should be watched more than once because something new and funny is revealed each time. The movie was released in 2000 with a budget of $26,000,000. Filming took place in Canton, Mississippi, and Florence, South Carolina, with amazing, beautiful scenes of the deep south.
The indisputable star of this movie is Kentucky-born George Timothy Clooney. During his career, he’s played a wide range of characters, but Ulysses Everett McGill gets my vote as the strangest. He ditched his sophisticated good looks and gentlemanly manners to step into a role of a country bumpkin who prides himself on his command of the English language and extensive knowledge of all things. His decisions are driven by possible inbreeding and definite illegal tendencies as he repeatedly defines his situation with the phrase, “We’re in a tight spot!”
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Odd events of these southern characters, with their quirky customs and inherited prejudices, are inspired in a strange but entertaining way by the writings of Homer, who lived between the twelfth and eighth century BC. The movie is set in the early 1930’s Great Depression era. It begins with three convicts, Ulysses Everett McGill, Pete Hogwallop, and Delmar O’Donnell, who have escaped from a southern chain gang and are trying to go home.
If one stretches the imagination, the journey from prison of George Clooney’s character parallels Homer’s main character, Odysseus, as he travels from the Trojan wars. The movie and the ancient poem each present mystic and strange characters in equally strange events as the main characters travel home to prevent their wives from marrying someone else.
The Coen brothers, writers of “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?,” claimed to have never read an entire version of the “Odyssey.” Still, they assure moviegoers that many elements of the film are loosely inspired by characters and events in the well-known poem.
In the Odyssey, after being warned by Circe of the danger of the song of the mermaids or sirens, Odysseus forces his sailors to tie him to the mast, allowing him to hear the melody of the mermaids but protecting him from physical contact. He orders his sailors to plug their ears so they cannot hear the dangerous melodies of the mermaids nor his screams for release when the ship ventures closer.
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In “O’ Brother,” Ulysses McGill and his companions are seduced by the song of three beautiful, scantily dressed sirens who are washing clothes in a river. Their music and beauty drive our three travelers insane. The following day, one of the three men, it seems, has been mystically transformed. Isn’t that always the way with sirens and mermaids?
In the Odyssey, Odysseus encounters a mystical cyclops; In “O’ Brother,” McGill and O’Dell meet a mean, fast-talking John Goodman with an eye patch and a dislike for small reptiles.
The escapees are chased all through their strange journey by Sheriff Cooley (Daniel Von Bargen), whose demeanor and sunglasses remind me of the guard called “Boss” (Morgan Woodward) in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.” Sheriff Cooley in “O’ Brother” corresponds to Poseidon in the Odyssey.
Along the way, our travelers encounter prophets, the Ku Klux Klan, Baby Face Nelson, and a Baptism in a beautiful lake. There are shoot-em-up scenes with a daring escape from a burning barn, aided by a young feisty relative to Hogwallop whose small size forces him to drive a 1920s Ford with blocks of wood strapped to his feet to reach the pedals.
Charles Durning, a real-life recipient of a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts during WWII, started his career as a dancer. He is terrific as Pappy O’ Daniel, the southern flour mogul and politician who, in the movie, saves the singing and dancing Soggy Bottom Boys from incarceration.
There are so many memorable lines from this movie: “Well ain’t this place a geographical oddity … two weeks from everywhere”; and “Mrs. Hogwallop up and R-U-N-N-O-F-T.” But my favorite is from the scene where the all-knowing, Dapper-Dan-coiffed philosopher, Ulysses Everett McGill, gives a severe warning of how evil appears, “There are all manner of lesser imps and demons … but the great Satan hisself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail, and he carries a hay fork.”
