Products Similar to Pomade Oh Brother Where Art Thou

The Coen Brothers have not still made a musical, although I believe the idea has been discussed. This is surprising in a fashion, because there is something naturally musical about the pace and mode of a Coen movie. The films are bogus and lay great emphasis on spectacle. The dialogue has rhythm and cadence, and certain phrases are repeated like leitmotifs.

The nearest that the Coens have come to making a musical so far is O Brother, Where Art Thou. Music and singing feature in a big number of scenes in the film, and the characters themselves sing a few of the songs.

The tunes are not original numbers written for the pic, but a collection of folk and religious songs from the catamenia in which the story is gear up (the action takes place in 1937). Music is so of import to the picture that the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou was actually more successful than the movie, selling 5 meg copies and winning a Grammy Award.

Within the moving picture too, music plays a significant office in the fates of the characters. Our heroes uses music to brand a little money by going into a local recording studio and performing a encompass version of Man of Constant Sorrow, and this melody volition ultimately prove to be their salvation. Their friend Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) values music so much that he apparently sold his soul to the devil to improve his guitar skills.

Music is exploited for contemptuous ends too. The two political rivals, Menelaus 'Pappy' O'Daniel (Charles Durning) and Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall) apply music to support their political campaigns, and a moment of inspired opportunism finally gives Pappy the shot in the arm that his flagging campaign needs when he publicly backs the Soggy Bottom Boys. By dissimilarity, Homer'south attack on the musicians is the cause of his downfall.

People are ofttimes swayed by music. The audio of Baptists singing 'Down to the River to Pray' is enough to persuade 2 of the escaped convicts, Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) to eagerly get themselves baptised. Later a trio of sirens lure the convicts onto the rocks with a rendition of 'Didn't Go out Nobody but the Infant', and manus i of them over to the police in lodge to become the reward money.

Music is just ane of the influences on O Blood brother, Where Art Thou. Equally is widely known, the shape of the story is loosely shaped past Homer'due south poem, The Odyssey. This is despite the fact that the Coens confessed to not having read Homer's original work. Ironically the only cast member who had read the piece of work was Tim Blake Nelson. He plays an unintelligent hayseed in the picture, simply really Nelson has a degree in classics.

Of form ane does non have to read The Odyssey to be familiar with the tale. I learnt near of its details when I was at school, and the story is well-known. Classical scholars will insist that The Iliad is the better work, but a poem describing a few battles in wartime volition never capture our imagination in the same was equally a saga nearly a man journey domicile, and facing a serial of episodic events that weep out for symbolic or emblematic interpretation.

I volition not land all the echoes of The Odyssey here, but I have mentioned a few already. The political candidates are called Homer and Menelaus (the proper noun of Helen of Troy's hubby). In the Odyssey, bodily sirens endeavor to lure Odysseus and his coiffure onto the rocks with their cute singing. The Baptists conduct echoes of the Lotus Eaters, a race of people living on an island who alive in a permanent state of sleepiness due to consumption of the lotus establish.

The central premise of the story is the aforementioned as that of The Odyssey. The hero is Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney). Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus, and in The Odyssey, the titular character is journey habitation to his married woman. This wife, Penelope, is beingness plagued past suitors, who insist that Odysseus must exist dead. One interpretation of the etymology of Odysseus' name suggests that it means 'human being of sorrow', words that are echoed in the song that Everett sings in the moving picture, 'Man of Constant Sorrow'.

The motivation of Everett is just fabricated clear later. Like Odysseus, he has a gift for glib speech, although he is non as smart as he thinks he is. Withal he is plausible and persuasive, and has all the charms of a salesman. This includes a fondness for hair products. He wakes upwardly mumbling 'My hair" and has an atmospherics with a store owner who tries to sell him Fop instead of Dapper Dan, his favoured pomade. (Incidentally the film led to an increase in sales for both products.)

Everett has escaped from a chain gang with his friends Pete and Delmar, whom he persuaded to join him by telling them a story almost buried boodle that must be rescued within a few days earlier the area is flooded to create a lake. In actual fact, his existent motive for escaping the chain gang is the aforementioned one that propelled Odysseus on his journeying. He wishes to return home to see his married woman, likewise called Penelope.

This Penny (Holly Hunter) is a different effigy from Homer's heroine. Far from resisting suitors, she has accepted one every bit her fiancé, and it is she who is telling people that her husband is dead, because she is ashamed of him. As in Raising Arizona, I cannot help deploring that the charming Holly Hunter is consigned to the role of a shrewish harpy in Coen movies. Here she is sharp with her husband, and has an unreasonable habit of counting to ten earlier forming an unshakeable resolution, no matter how impractical that might be.

Everett wishes to tackle her new suitor Vernon T Waldrip (Ray McKinnon), simply Waldrip proves to be taller and a better fighter. Instead Everett is bested in the brawl, and has the additional indignity of being banned from Woolworths. The rest of the story is unimportant, since it is the humour, incidental detail and boggling visual trickery that brand the film a joy to sentry. Essentially Everett must seek to woo Penny back while keeping himself, Pete and Delmar from being recaptured by the law.

Coen films often show sympathy for criminals and outcasts. Nosotros are encouraged to root for the escaped convicts. The movie's three heroes and the crowds watching the Soggy Bottom Boys concert are sympathetic to black people such as Tommy – if only Mississippi really did have such a reputation for tolerance! Admittedly Tommy is withal a lesser graphic symbol than the three white convicts, and it is necessary for white men to rescue him from a lynching later. Some attitudes have not changed that much.

Dominance figures are the real villains. Politicians are corrupt and weak. The law is a relentless and unforgiving trunk. Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen) pursues the convicts without cease. His nighttime sunglasses reflect fire in them, giving him a sinister await. He tortures Pete, and virtually kills the convicts. When he catches upward with them, he intends to accept them hanged. When they protest that is against the law. Cooley answers: "The law is a homo establishment".

The cruelty of the chain gangs that were forced to cut up rocks under brutal conditions was not a new theme in cinema, and O Brother, Where Art Thou pays homage to a number of one-time movies. A chain gang featured in the prison house movie, Cool Hand Luke, and the warden in that flick bears a resemblance to Sheriff Cooley. Both habiliment night glasses and use bloodhounds.

The most obvious inspiration is Sullivan's Travels, a 1940s comedy past Preston Sturges virtually a film director who wishes to write a film highlighting social injustices. The film that he wishes to make is also called O Blood brother, Where Art Thou. Along the way, the managing director is accidentally arrested and thrown onto a concatenation gang where he is treated desperately.

Other films are affectionately referenced. In ane scene, the Ku Klux Klan bears a comic resemblance to the Wicked Witch's army in The Wizard of Oz. The Klansmen march in a dancing germination and their chant is similar to that of the Witch'south soldiers: "All we owe, we owe her". Our heroes infiltrate the KKK by knocking a few Klansmen unconscious and stealing their capes, only equally the Lion, Scarecrow and Tinman exercise in the other flick. The flood at the end recalls the climax of Moby Dick.  Everett and his friends cling to a coffin to survive the deluge whilst Tommy has the misfortune to be trying to hold onto a rotating roll-top desk-bound.

It is not only former picture palace but historical events that inspired O Brother, Where Art G. There really was a Tommy Johnson, a blues musician who is said to have sold his soul to the devil. Another historical figure who appears in the film is the bank robber George 'Baby Face' Nelson (played by Michael Badalucco), although the original Nelson had died three years earlier the film is set. Pappy O'Daniel and Homer Stokes are also composites of various politicians of the time.

While the Coens looked to the past for inspiration (old movies and historical characters), they besides embraced modern applied science in the making of the film. This was ane of the get-go movies to use digital colour correction throughout. This is used at the start and terminate to plow black-and-white gradually into colour and back. The colour tinting bleeds out the green lush landscape, and gives everything an autumnal, dusty wait, like the sepia colouring in The Wizard of Oz.

Digital effects are used to magical result during the climactic flood scene, where nosotros watch items that we have seen earlier in the story floating past under the water – Cooley's sunglasses, a bloodhound, a tyre swing, a banjo, and of form a big supply of Everett's tins of Dapper Dan. (The alluvion is predictable by the selection of band proper noun that Everett chooses when he records 'Man of Constant Sorrow' – they are called The Soggy Lesser Boys.)

It not only the style and content of O Brother, Where Art Thou that is a mix of the old and the new. It might be argued that the master theme of the film is the clash between the irrational superstitions and ignorance of the Old South and the coming world of rationalism and modernity that never quite replaces information technology. As we are told more than once in the film, people are looking for answers, and they seek them in both scientific and superstitious ways of thinking.

Throughout the film we run across people with a range of illogical beliefs that govern their behaviour, sometimes in a harmless manner, and sometimes in a dangerous way. The Baptists are harmless enough, then is the foolishness of Pete and Delmar who somehow imagine that a baptism will articulate them in the eyes of the constabulary likewise as god.

There is no hurt in the blind quondam man travelling forth the track track, who makes predictions about the travails of the three convicts that are vague plenty to come true, and a more bizarre prophecy that they will see a cow on the roof of a cotton business firm. Blindness or short-sightedness is a running motif in the pic – the blind man who runs the recording studio, the thick spectacles of Homer Stokes, the night sunglasses worn past Sheriff Cooley, and the eyepatch sported by the conman and Bible salesman Big Dan Teague (John Goodman).

Irrational beliefs accept their dark side also, although the moving-picture show never allows us to dwell on them. There is Infant Face Nelson, the psychotic and reckless banking company robber who is motivated more by irrational bouts of euphoria and depression than past a longing for money. We also see the KKK attempting to lynch Tommy. However the sight of the Klan singing and dancing is absurd, and the outfit of the Klansmen appears in comic forms. A midget wears the aforementioned outfit as the Imperial Wizard in miniature. A equus caballus is seen dressed in the familiar greatcoat. Big Dan Teague is among the Klansmen, with just 1 centre slit cut into this hood.

The dangers of irrational behavior are prepare out hither, albeit in cartoonish grade. Gear up against these is the moving-picture show's hero, Everett, a confirmed sceptic. Everett is always gear up with a rational explanation and a scornful dismissal of his friend'southward naïve superstitions. Later Pete and Delmar become themselves baptised, and Tommy tells them that he has sold his soul to the devil, Everett jokes, "I guess I'thou the only i who remains unaffiliated".

Of grade the influence of his colleagues and the environs around him will often affect Everett besides, and he volition sometimes curve in the direction of credulity. He is partly swayed by Delmar'southward conviction that the sirens have turned Pete into a toad. When the convicts face death towards the cease of the flick, Everett is prepared to pray for his life.

Still when his fortunes get meliorate, Everett is soon back to his boastful and unbelieving self. At the end, Everett is convinced that the flooding of the valley volition "hydro-electric up the whole durned country", and finally change the attitudes of his fellow southerners:

Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin' basis. Out with the erstwhile spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run anybody a wire and claw us all upward to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason – like the i they had in France – and not a moment as well soon…

Unfortunately Everett's fine speech is undermined when he all of a sudden sees a cow on the roof of a cotton firm. The incongruity and impossibility of the sight, and its prediction by the onetime human being at the beginning of the film, shows united states that perhaps the old backwards mumbo-jumbo of the South may non exist about to modify as much equally Everett imagines later all. Given that these unreasonable beliefs have contributed so much wonderful textile to the creation of this movie, I can't help suspecting that the Coens are secretly glad about that.

ackermanhenew1965.blogspot.com

Source: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/o-brother-where-art-thou-2000/

Share this post