DVD Review: O Brother Where Art Thou?

There were moments in O Brother, Where Art Thou? that made me smile. There were a few that made me chuckle. This is, I imagine, not the reaction a screenwriter hopes for when penning a comedy. And there you have it. I found the film to be cute, not inspired; amusing, not funny.

Joel and Ethan Coen (who created the very funny Fargo and The Big Lebowski) claim this film is based upon Homer's The Odyssey. I'm prepared to accept that it's based upon a Cliff's Notes version, or perhaps even a summary. Not that I expect a film that takes place during the Depression to be a faithful interpretation, mind you, but perhaps "inspired by" would have been a better way to put it.

The story, essentially, is this: Ulysses (George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) have escaped from a chain gang. Pete and Delmar believe they are in a race to recover Ulysses' stolen loot before it's discovered. The problem is, there is no stolen loot. Ulysses really needed to escape so that he could get back to his wife and since he was chained to Pete and Delmar, he had to tell them something to get them to go along.

Of course, there are mishaps along the way and the three characters succeed in narrowly escaping each one, only to land smack in the middle of the next. We're talking about a prodigious amount of luck here, both good and bad.

Elements from The Odyssey do crop up from time to time. Naturally, there's the journey the three characters embark upon and Clooney's character is named Ulysses. They also encounter a Cyclops, in the form of John Goodman, and three beautiful sirens, who, in a very creepy moment in the film, seduce the men with song.

The problem with the film, perhaps, is that the characters never seem real. For instance, rather than a personality the audience can care about, Ulysses is given the sort of shorthand personality that a writer will fall back on when he simply can't come up with anything original. The fact that Ulysses requires a specific brand of hair jelly and the first words out of his mouth every morning are "how's my hair?" are less like character traits and more like character gimmicks.

When we finally meet Ulysses' wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), she's such an unpleasant woman that you have to wonder why such a supposedly intelligent man would be so hell-bent to get back to her. Perhaps he was better off in the chain gang.

As I mentioned above, the film takes place during the Depression, but this is more like Disneyland's Depressionland than any real depiction of the period. It's a watered down, sanitized version, with no feeling of authentic mood. It could be argued that, as a comedy, the film shouldn't strive for gritty realism. On the other hand, you could also pose an argument against the wisdom of using the Depression as a backdrop for comedy in the first place.

The one thing O Brother, Where Art Thou? does have going for it is its visual style. A great amount of post-production work has been done on the film to give it a unique look. Greens are altered to rich coppers and browns, giving the film the feeling of old photographs. To look at, this film is an outstanding achievement.

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