Coen Brother's Comic Odyssey is a Strange, Funny Trip

by Jason Zingale
For The Post

Saying that the Coen brothers' new film is adapted from Homer's Odyssey is like saying yogurt is adapted from milk - true, but not especially informative.

Joyously unhinged and outrageously inventive, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the latest endeavor from the twisted imaginations of Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski). The plot hinges roughly on Homer's Odyssey, but becomes a Depression-era musical about three convicts who escape a prison farm and become overnight musical sensations.

As the convicts travel across the rural South, they encounter the usual Homeric obstacles - sort of. Sirens mesmerize the men with elusively seductive music, the Cyclops is a crooked Bible salesman (John Goodman) and Cassandra, "the blind seer," is reborn as an old black man (Lee Weaver) who travels endlessly down a railroad track and forecasts an adventure for the fugitives.

George Clooney, giving his best performance yet, is the ringleader Ulysses Everett McGill. Clooney's Everett resembles a Clark Gable cartoon with a pencil-thin mustache and an obsession with hair pomade. Everett uses the lure of a phony hidden treasure to con two of his simple-minded chain-gang buddies Pete and Delmar (John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson) into escaping with him.On the way, they encounter a series of obstacles and lucky breaks, bizarre characters and aberrations of nature.

Simultaneously boastful and modest, foolish and lovable, Everett is appealing because Clooney plays him with wit, style and intelligence. This is important because the Coens surround him with extravagantly weird characters, and then make every effort to enhance the oddities. This creates a sense that Everett is a matinee idol in the old sense, his effortless authority creating a center for each scene.

The Coens' dialogue is equally stylish. Right from the opening scene, their precise, rhythmic language draws viewers into the off-beat world. After Pete and Delmar get baptized, they treat salvation as if the parole board granted it. The movie walks a similar line, mostly with success.

The Coens lose track of the story - Everett's accidental success as a bluegrass singer vanishes and reappears without warning, but it turns out to be crucial - and creators don't do much to develop the movie's major theme, which has to do with faith in a higher power.

This is a musical. Music is everywhere, from the sirens singing a cappella on the riverbank, to our heroes cutting a record, to a Ku Klux Klan lynching ceremony. What makes this work is the Coens' mastery of cartoon physics.

A lighter story than some Coen brothers' films, O Brother makes it easy to forgive the parts that don't work well. Besides - viewers have the pleasure to hear the year's finest soundtrack. Sheer bluegrass joy for all.

4 OF 5 STARS