Coen Bros: Seeking Traysure
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Director: Joel Coen
Released: December 22, 2000
**** 4/5
Plain and simple, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is awesome. It’s a smiler, one of those movies that plants a goofy grin on your face and keeps it there without you realizing. The characters are great, the writing’s funny, the mythological undertones are interesting and it’s musical without really being a musical. And maybe that last thing is what really sells me. Most musicals, they’re theatrical and melodramatic. They feel conscious and big–not just a movie, but a *musical*. They don’t feel integrated like this one does, like the creators’ first intention was still to tell a story, not just fill the gaps between dance numbers.
I’m really feeling now that the Coens are onto something. Their last 3 (including Fargo and Lebowski) just seem so much more settled into themselves than most of their earlier stuff. Not necessarily in terms of style–it’s seeming more and more that one of tenets of their style is that it constantly change–but more in the way it feels on the screen, more comfortable, not as staged. And watching O Brother again really cemented that in for me, their dedication to change and experimentation, one film a wacky comedy about baby stealing, the next a ’30s-era mafia story, then an metaphor-steeped Faust-ish one, then a musical. There are similarities, sure, but when it comes to matters of tone or form, what they’ll do next is anybody’s guess. And there’s really something to be said about that. If it’s not the range you respect, you have to respect the stubbornness. These guys are making movies for themselves, putting their art over any desire they might have of securing an “auteur” status or being consistent to any kind of fanbase. And if you ask me, that’s pretty damn admirable.
Next Coen film: The Man Who Wasn’t There
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