O Brother, Where Art Thou?

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?             A                    

USA  Great Britain  France  (107 mi)  2000  ‘Scope  d:  Joel and Ethan Coen

O Muse,

Sing in me, and through me tell the story

Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending

A wanderer, harried for years on end…

Writing, directing, producing, and editing their own films, this series of FARGO (1996), THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998), and O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? may be the peak of the Coen Brother invention and creativity.  Originating in the mind of Preston Sturges from the great American classic Sullivan's Travels (1941), this Coen Brothers manic romp through the American South plays like a double bill, stealing the title from the film Sullivan originally wanted to make about the Great Depression, returning to the era of the 1930’s.  While the film is a wildly exaggerated comical farce throughout, creating a mythical landscape filled with colorful characters that all resemble Southern stereotypes, similarly evolving through a series of surrealist, Odysseus-like misadventures, turning into a meandering heroic journey of self-discovery, overcoming plenty of “ob-stack-les” along the way.  While this doesn’t have the heft of the original, where madcap comedy is mixed with rare dramatic realism, creating an underlying core of poverty-laden bleakness, the Coens are instead content to maintain a subversive tone of screwball comedy throughout, where much like Sullivan’s conversion at the end of his travails, he just wanted to make a tribute to comedy.  Who better than the Coens to make a mockery of some rather grand Southern traditions, yet in doing so, they retain something essentially American in the process, where free speech is one of our founding principles.  Opening with a prison break, 3 escapees from the Mississippi Parchman Farm chain gang become our anointed heroes on the journey, the slick-haired, sharp-tongued George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, the ringleader of the pack, with John Turturro as Pete, the eternally pessimistic and constantly complaining sidekick, and the ever loveable Tim Blake Nelson as the sweetly generous and overly optimistic but “dumb as rocks” Delmar.  Chained together in prison garb, they create quite a sight, but the clue to their success is their constant, congenial banter, where Ulysses is always philosophizing about some nonsense, with Pete his constant foil and nemesis, with Delmar always dreaming about something else entirely.  Adding to the film’s massive appeal is the eclectic country music soundtrack produced by T-Bone Burnett, including spirituals, gospel, delta blues, country, a capella, folk music, and swing, becoming a major component of the film, winning the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001 GRAMMY® Album of the Year for 2001, O Brother, Where Art Thou ..., where the movie is single-handedly responsible for a bluegrass revival in America.  

Adding a digitally enhanced sepia tone, the cinematography by Roger Deakins captures that dusty look of endless dirt roads and golden hue’d crops, where the prison breakout music used is “Big Rock Candy Mountain” BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAINS - Harry Mac McClintock ... - YouTube (2:29), adding an element of fantasy and colorful hobo storytelling, where the period-specific music continues to be part of the story.  With the bloodhounds after them, almost immediately we’re immersed in the mythical aspect of the tale, where a blind black man drives a railway handcar that they hoist themselves onto for a getaway, where he mystifyingly foretells their future in exact detail, a reference to Homer, the ancient blind Greek author of The Odyssey.   After a brief incident with the law, where Ulysses can continually be heard muttering “Damn! We're in a tight spot!” a little kid gets them out of a jam with his reckless driving, exactly as in the Sturges film, where we discover Ulysses has a thing for Dapper Dan hair gel, leaving a trail of empty tin cans behind.  Despite their continuing series of misadventures, discovering sexually promiscuous sirens at a riverbank The Sirens - O Brother, Where Art Thou? (5/10) Movie ... - YouTube (3:30), picking up Tommy, a young black guitarist (Chris Thomas King) at a crossroads who sold his soul to the Devil, a reference to Delta blues great Robert Johnson who wrote the song “Cross Road Blues” Robert Johnson CrossRoads - Cross Road Blues ... YouTube (2:29), making a brief appearance at a rural radio station where as the Soggy Bottom Boys they cut a record that becomes an instant hit across the South (even to Mobile, Alabama!), O Brother Where Art Though - The Soggy Bottom Boys - I ... - YouTube (3:29), a bullet-filled run-in with Pretty Boy Floyd on a bank robbery spree, where they never appear far from the chain gang, who continually reappear throughout the film.  Again mirroring a scene from the original, but with a slightly demented twist, Ulysses is in a movie theater with Delmar discussing the unavoidable untrustworthiness of women in general when sheriffs appear with rifles at both exits and the movie stops.  Thinking they are in another tight spot about to be apprehended, the sheriffs usher the chain gang into the theater, as they are granted permission to watch the movies.   

Cultural references abound in this film, where in several instances the screen visualization is a reference to Eudora Welty WPA photographs, where a remote broken down shack matches the boyhood home of Ulysses, MWP Welty Gallery: Home with Bottle-trees (photograph), while earlier we saw two young kids carrying large blocks of ice down a country road, Carrying the Ice Home for Sunday Dinner « AZ SOAP.  A corrupt governor’s race becomes part of the background, with all the hick populist mannerisms and good ‘ol boy jokes, where the song “You Are My Sunshine” was the theme song of Louisiana’s two-term “Singing Governor” Jimmie Davis Jimmie Davis You Are My Sunshine - YouTube (2:54), and where Ulysses’ long unseen wife Penelope (Holly Hunter) is being courted by the campaign manager of the reform candidate, promising more of a stable future than Ulysses can offer, leaving him moping about his rotten luck.  In what is easily the most controversial sequence, in a film that features remarkable set pieces, our heroes have an accidental run-in with a Klu Klux Klan rally, which is choreographed like a Busby Berkeley musical, yet resembles the menace of the flying monkeys marching in formation in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).  Our heroes are honor bound to crash the lynching party to rescue Tommy, where the Grand Wizard is, of course, one of the gubernatorial candidates who is seen later getting run out of town on a rail.  Escaping under cover of Marx Brothers style mayhem and pandemonium, this is all part of the Coen Brothers whimsical comic madness, where the entire film is a series of setbacks, disasters, escapes and near misses, where death is always close at hand.  Yet through it all, these lead characters maintain their essential goodness through their flair for comic goofiness and unending naiveté.  George Clooney apparently rehearsed for weeks to sing the signature song “A Man of Constant Sorrow,” ultimately sung by Dan Tyminski, a member of the band Alison Krauss and Union Station, but he does get credit for his own on-stage moves, a kind of Appalachian chicken dance that the choreographers hated but always made the Coens laugh, O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU - Constant ... YouTube (7:05).  A film literally steeped in popular culture, it shows America at its best, warts and all, where folksy, down to earth humor literally rules the day.  It was Sullivan who had a change of heart and decided even the most wretched and troublesome souls facing a lifetime in prison could be moved by the joy of laughter, where humanity universally has a soft spot for comedy.

Sullivan's Travels

SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS       A                    

USA  (90 mi)  1941  d:  Preston Sturges

To the memory of those who made us laugh: to the motley mountebacks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated.  

Preston Sturges began his career as a playwright, earning more than a quarter of a million dollars by his second Broadway play, Strictly Dishonorable, a staggering figure at the outset of the Depression in the late 1920’s, eventually becoming a movie screenwriter in the 1930’s, becoming disenchanted with the way Hollywood directors were handling his dialogue, so he traded in his salary rights for the screenplay of THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940) for the chance to direct the film, something that set a precedent for later writer/directors like Billy Wilder and John Huston, not only to direct their own material, but to assemble their own unofficial stock company.  With Paramount promoting the film, it was a modest financial success, with Sturges winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, his first of three nominations in the category, also including two films from 1944, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK.  Though he had a thirty-year career in Hollywood, Sturges’ most prolific output came between 1940 to 1944, writing 7 comedies, four of which were chosen by the American Film Institute (AFI) among their 100 funniest American films, after which his career (still in his mid-40’s) over the next 15 years sputtered, eventually dying bankrupt and forgotten while writing his memoirs in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, a haven for literary figures, very similar, oddly enough, to the fizzled career of actress Veronica Lake in the 50’s, who was arrested later in life for public drunkenness, drifting from various cheap hotels until she eventually died of alcoholism. 

Released just a few weeks after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, the timing of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS feels unfortunate, as a comic film satirizing the tastelessness and pretentious nature of the movie industry feels secondary to a nation at war, as it questions the reality as presented by Hollywood films at a time when the nation itself was immersed in a devastatingly ugly reality of its own, the American entrance into World War II.  Making matters worse, the film was advertised as a Veronica Lake movie following her rapid rise to fame from I WANTED WINGS (1941), the first film to showcase the actress as a platinum blond, yet she is more of a sidekick in a film that was written for lead actor Joel McCrea as a kind of everyman.  The result is a film that was unsuccessful at the box office, one of the bleakest and most disturbing comedies to ever come out of Hollywood, but whose reputation has only grown over time.  The film is surprisingly complex with two distinctly different halves, with inexplicably surreal moments, evolving through a series of Odysseus-like misadventures, turning into a meandering heroic journey of self-discovery, overcoming plenty of obstacles along the way.  A parody of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but instead of moving from a cheery optimist to a human misanthrope, this film instead doubts its own relevancy at the outset and slowly discovers its reason for being along the way.  Opening with a film within a film, McCrea as Sullivan is a Hollywood director who’s had a string of lightweight, comedic hits, but now wants to direct something more serious, choosing to explore the destitute world of tramps during the Depression living on the road, hopping boxcars, and living in hobo camps from the novel O Brother, Where Art Thou? (a title later claimed by the Coen Brothers in their tribute to this film in 2000).  While the studio heads hate the idea, claiming it’s too depressing, Sullivan insists upon going on the road and discovering firsthand what it’s like to be poor. 

The absurdity of seeing a Hollywood movie mogul, a college graduate educated in prep schools dressing as a penniless hobo and hitting the road, is patently ridiculous, especially with a motor home of his handlers following close behind.  Thus the journey begins with the most exaggerated, broadly based and stereotypical characterizations, which includes the frenetic pace of screwball comedy and a chase scene right out of the Keystone Cops, where some may take offense by the derogatory racial caricature of a black chef, credited as the “colored cook,” but all the characters revert to the outlandish mannerisms of Silent era films, where Sullivan himself is a throwback to Chaplin’s Little Tramp and his association with poverty, especially when he enters the domain of the downtrodden.  Soon enough, after some unpleasantries performing community service in the home of a sex-starved widow, Sullivan finds himself right back in Hollywood, now a hobo entering a cheap diner for a cup of coffee, where an attractive young actress wannabe known only as the Girl (Veronica Lake) buys him a meal.  Their dialogue together is reminiscent of Lake as a femme fatale in film noir, as she’s got a tough edge to her delivery, but their chemistry together is instantly appealing, especially the way she always seems to smile at his awkwardness and utter male futility, feeling somewhat betrayed when he turns out to be one of those same successful Hollywood directors that have been turning her down for months.  One of the priceless scenes is seeing Sullivan dressed as a tramp walking around his million dollar Beverly Hills mansion showing off his tennis courts and his pool.  Insistent upon carrying out his harebrained scheme, she insists upon going along with him, both dressed as tramps, where she’s dressed as a young boy, where they hop traincars and interestingly sleep together in boxcars and hobo camps.        

In what is easily the scene of the film, precisely the film Sullivan wanted to make, Sturges films their entry into the actual world of tramps as a wordless montage, a seven-minute sequence panning through all the various down-and-out characters of a shantytown, where by now they’re literally no different, wearing sandwich board signs for cash or passing out leaflets, forced to endure the endless church sermons for a free meal and having to sleep cramped on the floor in hobo shelters, where his shoes are stolen while he slept.  In a romantically tender scene that defies belief, the two are alone strolling along a moonlit lake, seemingly in perfect harmony with nature and each other, yet they walk right past a man literally hanging from a tree, where his feet can be seen dangling from the branches, but neither one looks or comments upon it, and there is no reference to it whatsoever in the film.  The reference to evil is like something out of The Night of the Hunter (1955), only seen from an adult’s perspective.  It’s here that a darker realism clearly replaces the lightweight, artificial tone expressed earlier in the film.  In fact, Sullivan accidentally ends up in his own nightmare, like one of his concocted movie adventures, only this time it’s real and there is no escape.  After being hit on the head and left for dead, he ends up charged with a crime he can’t remember (from temporary amnesia) and sentenced to a chain gang, entering a hallucinatory world where he’s quickly woken up by his grotesque mistreatment, denied all privileges like writing or making a phone call, literally becoming a caged animal, caught in a bleaker existence than Hitchcock’s equally downbeat The Wrong Man (1956). 

This prolonged sequence of brutality prevented the film from being exported overseas during wartime, so the enemy could not use it for propaganda purposes.  But this evolves into an utterly enthralling sequence in a black Pentecostal church, where the pastor (Jess Lee Brooks) vociferously asks his congregation “by word or deed” not to make the all-white chain gang prisoners feel unwelcome, singing “Let My People Go” Go Down Moses - Sullivan's Travels (1941) - YouTube (3:31) as they are led into the front rows to watch a movie together with the parishioners.  The race reversal and depth of sorrow of chants from typical black chain gangs does not go unnoticed in this weird twist of fate, where unlike the exaggerated caricature of the black chef early in the film, here blacks are portrayed with utmost dignity and sincerity, becoming the most humane people in the film.  It was Sturges intention to play a Chaplin film, but rights were denied, playing a Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring Playful Pluto (1934), where Pluto’s paws continually get caught on fly paper, where the animated pranks and pratfalls leave the congregation in stitches, a welcome relief from the otherwise harsh human conditions.  Overall this is a clever and extremely witty film, becoming a populist treatise on humor, where the concise film construction itself is continually unpredictable, becoming a film for the ages.  While the film is on a short list of one of the funniest films ever, particularly at the time of its release, it’s perhaps best remembered today for its serious elements, where what’s ostensibly a comedic film brilliantly accentuates the plight of the poor while at the same time highlighting the clueless nature of an affluent class that remains indifferent to their lives, pointing out in an autobiographical context the hypocrisy of a multi-million dollar industry making films about subjects it clearly fails to understand.  The film is stunning in its refreshingly honest insight.