Following Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, writer, director, producer team Ethan and Joel Coen created a film no one could have expected. Viewers will enjoy the performances of Clooney, Turturro, and Nelson. As implied, the cinematography is lush and CGI is skillfully interwoven into the decidedly analog time and place represented herein. Solid and memorable musical performance and soundtrack add an integral sonic dimension to this barnstormin' hoedown.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is nostalgic psychedelia. The story and scenes float as if suspended in a lava lamp, or in the calm aftermath of flooded river valley. The picture is "show", not "tell" (there is literally no "telling" in the film). The plot is steeped in thick Christian revelry, but it's literally basis, Homer's Odyssey, pre-dates the Gospels by hundreds of years. Again, its not a matter of complete comprehension, what you see is what you get what you want to see. The music group R.E.M. comes to mind, with their speaking-in-tongues folklore. For America, this is cultural Kudzu, for the Coen brothers, rococo. Trials and tribulations. Lush. An once the film is both frivolous, but then again profound. In Greil Marcus's book, The Shape of Things to Come, he begins by expounding the ideology of America as an ideal / idea. That can be applied to the film. Here is an American moment in a pseudo-mythology, anachronistic, a steam-punk history impossible possible.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is nostalgic psychedelia. The story and scenes float as if suspended in a lava lamp, or in the calm aftermath of flooded river valley. The picture is "show", not "tell" (there is literally no "telling" in the film). The plot is steeped in thick Christian revelry, but it's literally basis, Homer's Odyssey, pre-dates the Gospels by hundreds of years. Again, its not a matter of complete comprehension, what you see is what you get what you want to see. The music group R.E.M. comes to mind, with their speaking-in-tongues folklore. For America, this is cultural Kudzu, for the Coen brothers, rococo. Trials and tribulations. Lush. An once the film is both frivolous, but then again profound. In Greil Marcus's book, The Shape of Things to Come, he begins by expounding the ideology of America as an ideal / idea. That can be applied to the film. Here is an American moment in a pseudo-mythology, anachronistic, a steam-punk history impossible possible.