O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 adventure film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning.[2] Set in 1937 Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's imaginative story is loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey. The film displays a sly reference to another type of mythmaking: filmmaking, specifically the 1941 satire Sullivan's Travels by Preston Sturges, in which the title character sets out to make a grim, socially conscious film to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou? After the privileged director experiences hardships of his own, he decides that comedic films are of more value than self-important dramas. Similarly, the Coen brothers' movie also has the tone and imagery of Depression-era realism interlaced with a comedic element.

The American roots soundtrack won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001.[3]

Ulysses Everett McGill, known as Everett (George Clooney), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro), and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang and set out to retrieve the $1.2 million in treasure that Everett claims to have stolen from an armored car and buried before his incarceration. They have only four days to find it before the valley in which it is hidden will be flooded to create Arkabutla Lake as part of a new hydroelectric project. Early on in their escape, they try to jump onto a moving train with some hobos, but fall off due to Pete's inability to get on. They then encounter a blind man traveling on a manual railroad car. They hitch a ride, and he foretells their futures, similar to the oracle of Homer's Odyssey.

The group sets out for the treasure. They walk to Pete's cousin's house, who removes their chains. He turns them into the authorities because he needs the money to support hi family. They escape from the burning barn where they were sleeping, and continue on their journey. When they pass a congregation on the banks of a river, Pete and Delmar are enticed by the idea of baptism. As the journey continues, they travel briefly with a young guitarist named Tommy Johnson (a character with similarities to blues guitarists Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson, played by real-life blues musician Chris Thomas King). When asked why he was at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, he reveals that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar. Tommy describes the devil as being "White, white as you folks... with empty eyes and a big hollow voice. He loves to travel around with a mean old hound." This description happens to match the policeman who is pursuing the trio.

The four of them record "Man of Constant Sorrow" at a radio broadcast station, calling themselves the Soggy Bottom Boys. While they initially record the song for some easy money, it later becomes famous around the state. The trio parts ways with Tommy after their car is discovered by police, and they continue their adventures on their own. Among the many encounters they have, the most notable are a car trip and bank robbery with one George Nelson who when robbing a bank, is angered by an old woman who calls him Baby Face Nelson, a run-in with three sirens who seduce the group and hypnotize them to sleep (using a technique similar to those in the Odyssey)[4] before apparently turning Pete into a toad, and a mugging by a cyclopean Bible salesman named Big Dan Teague.

Everett and Delmar arrive in Everett’s home town only to find that Everett's wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), is engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip, campaign manager for gubernatorial candidate Homer Stokes. She refuses to take Everett back and is so ashamed of him that she has been telling their daughters he was hit by a train and killed. While watching a movie in a cinema, Everett and Delmar discover that Pete is still alive, the sirens having turned him in to collect the bounty on his head. After Everett and Delmar rescue him from jail, he tells them that he gave up the location of the treasure. Everett reveals that there was never any treasure; he only mentioned it to persuade the other men (to whom he was chained) to escape so he could reconcile with his estranged wife. Pete is outraged at this news, primarily because he had only had two weeks left on his original sentence, which has now been extended 50 years in light of his escape.

The main characters come across a lynch mob. As Everett scuffles with the furious Pete, the group stumbles upon the Ku Klux Klan, who have caught Tommy and are about to hang him. The three disguise themselves and attempt a rescue. Big Dan, one of the Klansmen, reveals their identities, and chaos ensues, in which the Grand Wizard of the gathering reveals himself as Stokes. The trio flee the scene with Tommy, cutting the supports of a large burning cross, which falls on a group of Klansmen, including Big Dan.

Everett convinces Pete, Delmar, and Tommy to help him win his wife back. They sneak into a Stokes campaign dinner that she is attending, disguised as musicians. Everett tries to convince his wife that he is "bona fide," but she brushes him off. The group begins an impromptu musical performance, during which the crowd recognizes them as the Soggy Bottom Boys and goes wild. Stokes, on the other hand, recognizes them as the group who disgraced his mob and shouts for the music to stop, angering the crowd. After he reveals his white supremacist views, the crowd runs him out of town on a rail. Pappy O’Daniel, the sitting state governor, seizes the opportunity and endorses the Soggy Bottom Boys, granting all of them a full pardon while the entire event is being recorded and played on the radio. Penny accepts Everett back, but she demands that he find her original ring if they are to be married. This series of events is similar to the return of Odysseus to Ithaca and his task of winning his wife Penelope from her suitors.[5] As they leave the dinner, they run into a mob taking jubilant George Nelson to the jail to be electrocuted. Delmar comments, "Looks like George is right back on top again."

The group sets out to retrieve the ring, which is at a cabin in the valley that Everett originally claimed to have hidden the treasure in. When they arrive, the police order their arrest and hanging. Everett protests that they had been pardoned on the radio, but the leader of the police force tells them that it is of no consequence, since the law is only a human institution, plus they have no radio. The guys begin to despair while Everett improvises a prayer to be saved. Suddenly, the valley is flooded and they are saved from hanging. Tommy finds the ring in a desk that he is floating on in the new lake, and they return to town. However, when Everett presents the ring to Penny, she tells him it is the wrong one and demands that he get her ring back. As Everett protests the futility of trying to find it at the bottom of the lake, the blind prophet the trio met earlier rolls by on his railway handcar, ending the film.

Cast

• George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill. A dashing, fast-talking Dapper Dan type, Everett was imprisoned for practicing law without a license. He escapes from prison so that he can stop his wife from marrying another man and preventing him from seeing his children. Ulysses is the Latin language form of the name of Odysseus,[6] the hero of Homer's Odyssey.
• Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar O'Donnell. Delmar is good-natured but simple-minded. He was imprisoned for robbing a Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Yazoo City; he claims at first that he is innocent, but later admits to the crime. Delmar says that he will spend his share of Everett's nonexistent $1.2-million buying back his family farm, believing that "you ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land."
• John Turturro as Pete. A crude, brutish criminal, Pete reveals little about his past. He believes in being true to your kin, even when his cousin Wash (Washington B. Hogwallop) betrays the group. He dreams of moving out west and opening a fine restaurant, where he will be the maître d'. He agreed to go along with the breakout, even though it is revealed that he only had two weeks left on his sentence.
• John Goodman as Daniel "Big Dan" Teague. Big Dan is one of the main enemies of the trio in the film. Masquerading as a Bible salesman, he cons Everett, then robs him. Later, he reveals the true identity of the trio when they are in disguise at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Big Dan has one eye, just as Polyphemus the Cyclops does in The Odyssey. It has been suggested that the character is based on the itinerant Bible salesman who exploits a naive woman in the short story Good Country People by Flannery O'Connor.[7]
• Holly Hunter as Penny McGill, née Wharvey. A demanding woman, Penny Wharvey is fed up with Everett's previous behavior and divorces him while he is in prison, telling their children that he was hit by a train. She is engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip until Everett wins her back. Her name is believed to be taken from Odysseus' wife, Penelope.
• Charles Durning as Governor Menelaus "Pass the biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel. Pappy is the incumbent Governor of Mississippi. He is frequently seen berating his son and his campaign managers, who are depicted as simpletons. Pappy O'Daniel's first name, Menelaus, is the name of a Greek hero, who fought alongside Odysseus in the Trojan War. His character is loosely based on former Governor of Texas W. Lee O'Daniel.
• Chris Thomas King as Tommy Johnson. Tommy Johnson is a very skilled blues musician. He is the accompanying guitarist in the band that Everett unwittingly forms, the Soggy Bottom Boys. He claims that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his skill on guitar. He seems to be loosely based on actual blues guitarist Robert Johnson.
• Daniel von Bargen as Sheriff Cooley. The sheriff pursues the trio for the duration of the film. He eventually captures them after they have been pardoned by the governor himself on the radio; he proposes to hang them regardless of this. He fits Tommy Johnson's description of the devil in that his sunglasses look like "big empty eyes" and he travels with a bloodhound. Most of the times he appears in the film there are flames nearby, usually reflected in his glasses. He further indicates his otherworldliness when, advised that it would be illegal to hang the pardoned fugitives, he sneeringly opines that "the law is a human institution."
• Wayne Duvall as Homer Stokes. Homer Stokes is the reform candidate in the upcoming election for the position of Governor of Mississippi. His travels the countryside with a midget mascot, who depicts the "little man," and with a broom, with which he promises to "sweep this state clean." He is secretly a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan.
• Ray McKinnon as Vernon T. Waldrip. Waldrip is Penny Wharvey's "bona fide" suitor. He is a weaselly campaign manager, working for Homer Stokes in his campaign against Pappy O'Daniel. It has been suggested that the character's name is a subtle nod to novelist Howard Waldrop, whose novella A Dozen Tough Jobs is one of the inspirations behind the film.[8] The character's name can also be taken as an allusion to William Faulkner's If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, which includes a character named Vernon Waldrip. The character, the situation, and the performance almost directly parallel a similar situation in John Ford's The Searchers.
• Michael Badalucco as George Nelson. A serial bankrobber who dislikes being called "Baby Face." His character, possibly based on Lester Joseph Gillis (better known as Baby Face Nelson), is depicted as being manic-depressive.
• Stephen Root as Mr. Lund the Radio Station Man. He is the blind radio station manager who pays musicians to "sing into a can" and originally records the Soggy Bottom Boys' hit, "Man of Constant Sorrow."
• Lee Weaver as the Blind Seer. An important character in the film, the Blind Seer accurately predicts the outcome of the trio's adventure as well as several other happenings. In the Odyssey, a similar role in the story is played by the shade of Tiresias.[9]
• Ed Gale as the Little Man. Homer Stokes's mascot.

Southern politics

A major theme of the film is the connection between old-time music and political campaigning in the southern U.S. It makes reference to the traditions, institutions, and campaign practices of bossism and political reform that defined Southern politics in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Ku Klux Klan, at the time a political force of white populism, is depicted burning crosses and engaging in ceremonial dance. The character of Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, the Governor of Mississippi and host of the radio show "The Flour Hour," is similar in name and demeanor to W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel,[10] one-time Governor of Texas and later U.S. Senator from the state of Texas.[11] W. Lee O'Daniel was in the flour business, and used a backing band called the Light Crust Doughboys on his radio show.[12] In one campaign, W. Lee O'Daniel carried a broom,[citation needed] an oft-used campaign device in the reform era, promising to sweep away patronage and corruption.[13] His theme song had the hook "Please pass the biscuits, Pappy," emphasizing his connection with flour.[12]

While the film borrows from real-life politics, there are obvious differences between the characters in the film and historical political figures. The O'Daniel of the movie used "You Are My Sunshine" as his theme song (which was originally recorded by real-life Governor of Louisiana James Houston "Jimmie" Davis[14]) and Homer Stokes, as the challenger to the incumbent O'Daniel, portrays himself as the "reform candidate," using a broom as a prop.

Music

Much of the music used in the film is folk music from the period in which the film is set,[15] including that of Virginia folk/bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley.[16] The music selection is drawn from spiritual music of this region[citation needed] (including that of the Primitive Baptist Church) and other popular religious music,[15]most notably the Fairfield Four, an a cappella quartet with a career extending back to 1921 who appear in the soundtrack and as gravediggers towards the film's end.

There is a notable use of dirges and other macabre songs, a theme that often recurs in Appalachian music[17] ("Oh Death," "Lonesome Valley," "Angel Band") in contrast to bright or corrective songs ("Keep On the Sunnyside," "You Are My Sunshine") in other parts of the movie.

Many people think that the lead-guitarist character (Tommy) of the Soggy Bottom Boys is an intended reference to Delta Blues artist Robert Johnson, who supposedly claimed that he sold his soul to the devil in return for being able to play the guitar. To many viewers, Robert Johnson would be a more familiar name, and a similar soul-selling story has been attached to him[18] (though not promulgated by himself). In addition, Everett and company first encounter Tommy at a rural crossroads, a fairly obvious allusion to Johnson's famous song, "Cross Road Blues." Nevertheless, T-Bone Burnett has explained that the character was not meant to represent Robert Johnson.[2] Rather, the character, portrayed by blues/rap artist Chris Thomas King, is probably moreover a reference to Tommy Johnson, who was also purported to have sold his soul to the devil. And the song that Tommy performs at the campfire, "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues," is by Skip James, so the Tommy character may serve as an amalgamation of a variety of country-blues artists of the 1930s.

Soggy Bottom Boys

Jordan Rivers and the Soggy Bottom Boys are the fictitious Depression-era "old-timey music" quartet and accompaniment from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? The name Soggy Bottom Boys is possibly a reference to the famous Foggy Mountain Boys, a West Virginia bluegrass band of the 1940s with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs,[19] but also a humorous name given the two backup singers who were wet from being baptized earlier in the film. The Soggy Bottom Boys’ hit single is Dick Burnett's "Man of Constant Sorrow," a song that had already enjoyed much success in real life.[20]

After the film's release, the fictional band became so popular that the actual talents behind the music (who were dubbed into the movie) Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Dan Tyminski, Chris Sharp, and others, performed music from O Brother, Where Art Thou? in a Down from the Mountain concert tour and film.[15][21] However, "I'll Fly Away" in the original soundtrack is performed not by Krauss and Welch (as it is on the CD release and was on the concert tour) but by the inimitable Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling (of The Weavers, Tarriers and Rooftop Singers) accompanying on long-neck 5-string banjo.[22]

The voices behind the Soggy Bottom Boys are well-known bluegrass musicians: Union Station's Dan Tyminski (lead on "Man of Constant Sorrow"), Nashville songwriter Harley Allen, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band's Pat Enright.[23] The three won a CMA Award for Single of the Year[23] and a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, both for the song "Man of Constant Sorrow."[3] Tim Blake Nelson, playing Delmar O'Donnell in the movie (one of the Soggy Bottom Boys), sang the lead vocal himself for the song "In the Jailhouse Now."[2]

"Man of Constant Sorrow" has five variations: two are used in the movie, one in the music video, and two in the soundtrack.[24] Two of the variations feature the verses being sung back-to-back, and the other three variations feature additional music between each verse.[24] Despite its subsequent success, "Man of Constant Sorrow" received little significant radio airplay[25] and only charted at #35 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts in 2002.[26]

Similarities between the film and The Odyssey

The opening credits explicity state the story of the film is based on The Odyssey by Homer. The similarities between O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Homer's Odyssey are numerous, ranging from the obvious to the obscure. While the Coens did not originally intend to base the film on Homer's epic, Joel Coen has been quoted as saying:

While the overall plot is only vaguely similar to that of the Odyssey, there are certain "episodes" that closely mirror the film's classical influence.

References

The only direct reference is the line of text shown at the beginning of the film, "O Muse! Sing in me, and through me tell the story...", which is one translation of the first line of the Odyssey. In addition to this, there are a few characters in the film that share names with similar characters in the Odyssey:

• Ulysses, the Latin form of the Greek name Odysseus, is the first name of the film's protagonist, Ulysses Everett McGill.
• Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, who pardons the Soggy Bottom Boys at the end of the film, shares his first name with the King of Sparta, who fought alongside Odysseus at Troy.
• Pappy O'Daniel's challenger in the election is Homer Stokes, who shares his first name with the author of the classical text.
• Odysseus' wife was named Penelope. Penny, a shortened version of Penelope, is the name of Everett’s wife.
• Pete makes a reference to Papillon. However at the time the film is set, Henri Charrière "Papillon" would have still been undergoing his sentence and his autobiography was not written until 1969. The film's subtitles state that Pete quotes Papillon however a script for the film on the internet quotes him as saying "Pab-you-lum!".

• When we see Pappy O'Daniel discussing the upcoming campaign in the restaurant, over his shoulder we can see a bust of Homer.

Many other characters are related without literal translation.

• The Sirens (washing women) that seduce the heroes are the Sirens that attempt to seduce Odysseus and his crew.
• Vernon symbolizes the suitors waiting to marry Penelope.
• The Blind Seer (railroad hobo) is Tiresias, the blind ghost prophet.
• Daniel "Big Dan" Teague (John Goodman), with his one good eye, is an allusion to Polyphemus the Cyclops.
• The Lotus Eaters are represented by the congregation walking trancelike to be baptized.

Plot parallels

• The old man on the railroad handcar is most likely an allusion to Tiresias, who prophesied the trials and tribulations of Odysseus' journey home when Odysseus visited him in the underworld. The underworld here is represented by the chain gang, which our heroes escape.
• The merciless sheriff is analogous to the god Poseidon, who torments Odysseus and prolongs his journey home. A link between Satan and Poseidon may be being made when Everett mentions that Satan carries "a giant hay fork" (a trident); both figures are often depicted with just such an instrument. In the penultimate scene of the film, the sheriff's dog and his hired men are killed in a surprise flood (though we do not know if the sheriff himself is dead, as no body appears), while Everett and his friends save themselves; Poseidon, god of the waters, destroyed all who had manned a ship sent to aid Odysseus, turning them into a rock in retaliation for the blinding of his son Polyphemus, and also plagued Odysseus himself constantly with floods. The sheriff may also reference the god Hades, who, as ruler of the underworld, is sometimes compared to Satan; the sheriff's hound echoes Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of the underworld.
• The travelers' siege in the Hogwallop barn parallels Odysseus' dangerous course between Scylla and Charybdis, when Everett helplessly cries "Damn! We're in a tight spot!" several times. This also could have paralleled Odysseus' peril in Polyphemus' cave.
• There is a trancelike progression of worshipers seeking to be baptized. Their glassy-eyed placidity draws a parallel with the Lotus-Eaters of the Odyssey.
• At one point, George Nelson shoots at a herd of cattle. Odysseus' fellow travelers slaughter the cows of the sun god Helios; Odysseus warns his men against killing the sacred oxen; Delmar says, "Oh, George, Not the livestock!. Because of this, in The Odyssey, Odysseus' ship is struck by a thunderbolt, killing all but him. In the film, George is sent to be executed in the electric chair. During the parade to the execution, someone leading a cow behind the mob yells, "Cow killer!"
• Continuing their journey, Pete tells them to pull over at a river because he sees beautiful, singing women. These women can be compared to the Sirens in The Odyssey that attract men, only to kill them in the end.
• After their encounter with the "Sirens," Everett and Delmar wake up to find Pete missing; Delmar is convinced Pete has been transformed into a frog. This is similar to Odysseus' encounter with Circe the witch-goddess, who turns half of his crew into swine.
• In the restaurant, Everett and Delmar encounter the one eyed bible salesman who then attacks them in a field to steal their money and car. This can be seen as a parallel to when Odysseus and his crew discover the cyclops Polyphemus which devours many of the crew
• Everett has to enter the dinner party in disguise to avoid detection. This parallels when Odysseus had to enter his own palace disguised as a beggar.
• Odysseus did not reveal himself before his wife's suitors until having strung his own bow and shot through twelve axes, a feat that only he could perform; similarly, the Soggy Bottom Boys' anonymous recording of "A Man of Constant Sorrow" becomes a smash hit, a fact that they remain unaware of until they perform the song again at the dinner party.

• The scene in the theater, when Pete tries to warn Everett and Delmar, parallels Odysseus' descent into the underworld, Hades. Delmar, believing that Pete had died, mistakes him (and thus also the other people in the theater) for a ghost. In this scene, Pete parallels Tiresias in the underworld.
• Following Everett's beating by Waldrip, Everett warns Delmar of the treachery of women. This is much like how Agamemnon, who had been betrayed by his wife and killed by her new husband, warns Odysseus not to trust women.

Miscellaneous parallels

• The dialogue in a scene between Everett and his daughters also gives a nod to its ancient influence. Using Latin terms, one of the girls says that Waldrip is bona fide, and Everett responds that he is the pater familiae. The girls also use the word "suitor" at least twice.
• In the scene where the trio and George Nelson are sitting around the fire after the robbery at Itta Bena, there are Greek columns in the background. (The columns could possibly be meant to be Windsor Ruins, located outside of Port Gibson, MS.)
• Everett also comes back to stop the marriage and fight Vernon, much as Odysseus comes back to kill the suitors. Everett, however, is badly beaten by Vernon, perhaps creating a parallel with Telemachus' inability to discharge his mother's suitors.
• When Everett, Pete, Delmar, and Tommy encounter the sheriff at the cabin, the sheriff remarks, "End of the road, boys. It's had its twists and turns." The opening line of The Odyssey is "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns."
• In the KKK scene, Everett, Pete and Delmar disguise themselves as members of the clan. In The Odyssey, the blind cyclops lets his sheep out to graze, trying to make sure that no one was attempting to escape by feeling the sheep's backs, but Odysseus tied his men and himself to the undersides of the sheep and so they got out.
• Everett calls himself "The Old Campaigner" on various occasions, an epithet for Odysseus.
• Everett has a son that he has never seen in person, much the same as Odysseus and Telemachus

Other allusions

The title of the film is a reference to the 1941 Preston Sturges film Sullivan's Travels, in which the protagonist (a director) wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called O Brother, Where Art Thou?[2] that will be a "commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man." Lacking any experience in this area, the director sets out on a journey to experience the human suffering of the average man but is sabotaged by his anxious studio. The film has some similarity in tone to Sturges' film, including scenes with prison gangs and a black church choir.[27]

The sheriff who pursues Everett, Pete, and Delmar wears a particular style of sunglasses (glacier glasses) even at night, similar to the sheriff seen in Cool Hand Luke.

The scene in which Everett, Pete, and Delmar infiltrate a Ku Klux Klan rally to save Tommy is strongly reminiscent of the scene in The Wizard of Oz in which the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow arrive at the Wicked Witch of the West's castle and infiltrate the Winkie Army in order to enter the castle and save Dorothy. The KKK members march in the same formation as the Winkies and chant the same "oh-we-oh" battle chant, while Everett, Pete, and Delmar infiltrate the group in the same manner as the Wizard of Oz scene, namely by luring three members out of the formation, knocking them out and donning their uniforms. Pappy O'Daniel's speech in which he pardons the trio also contains allusions to the Wizard's farewell speech to Oz.

The film also draws on and alludes to the Southern Gothic literary tradition of writers such as William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty.

Look of the film

One of the notable features of the film is its use of digital color correction to give the film a sepia-tinted look.[28]

This was the fifth film collaboration between the Coen Brothers and Roger Deakins, and it was slated to be shot in Mississippi at a time of year when the foliage, grass, trees, and bushes would be a lush green.[29] It was filmed near locations in Canton, MS; Florence, SC; and Wardville, LA. After shooting tests, including film bipack and bleach bypass techniques, Deakins suggested digital mastering be used.[29] The cinematographer subsequently spent eight weeks fine-tuning the look, mainly desaturating the greens and timing the digital files.[28] This made it the first feature film to be entirely color corrected by digital means, narrowly beating Nick Park's Chicken Run.[28]

Deakins was recognized with both Oscar and ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nominations for his work on the film.[29]

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